


That We Become

by supaslim



Series: The Way of All Flesh [2]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: All Kinds of Horror, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Cannibalism, Deathclaws, Enemies to Still Enemies But Not Actively Trying to Kill Each Other, Forced Bonding, Gen, Horror, I have no regrets, Independent New Vegas (Fallout), Lonesome Road DLC, Marked Men - Freeform, Night Stalkers, Psychological Horror, Road Trip from Hell, Unhealthy Relationships, Unrepentant Grossness, all aboard the pain train, evil karma, ghouls galore, longfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-16
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-02-15 17:12:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 57,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13035702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supaslim/pseuds/supaslim
Summary: Bound by bomb collars after the Battle for Hoover Dam, Boone and Vulpes cross the Mojave to find the Courier and put him down for good.Sequel to"Wight"





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a direct sequel to "Wight" and it won't make much sense unless you read that first. Please do!
> 
> Also, please consider subscribing to the series so you can stay updated about sequels!

Vulpes moved across the cliff tops, still retaining enough sense to crouch somewhat as he went.

Boone followed close behind, clutching a PipBoy in his hands. Vulpes had torn it off his wrist when he came around, had cut the rope that tethered him to the sniper with a hunting knife tucked in one boot, and had set off.

He searched for words to stop him, and found none.

Vulpes only slowed when he reached the edge of the small plateau. NCR still moved below, dragging their dead and wounded out of the battlefield. Securitrons rolled over detached limbs and chunks of concrete, supervising the effort, their own rockets at the ready should it look as though the battle would resume.

After a moment of observation, the Frumentarius slid down the steep slope, stumbling as the land leveled out. The bomb collars began beeping. Boone felt his stomach lurch at the sound, and threw himself down the incline after him. The distance between the two men narrowed, and the collars fell silent.

Vulpes kept walking. The troopers ignored him. Maybe it was because without his dog skin head gear and dark, obscuring goggles he couldn’t be marked as a Frumentarius. Or maybe it was because with his hair plastered to his scalp with sweat and dust, and those deeply empty eyes, he looked like just another shell shocked soldier rather than the cold-hearted monster whose face peered out from the propaganda that littered their outposts. Maybe they didn't recognize the dark Legion armor he wore under his stolen long coat for what it was without the glaring red the lower ranks wore. Maybe it was because they saw the bomb collar on him, or because of the man with the 1st Recon beret that followed him so closely.

Maybe, Boone thought to himself numbly as the Boomers' restored plane made a pass over the dam, they just didn't care anymore. He stepped over a body and told himself he didn't recognize its face. A growing storm of crows brewed overhead, wheeling and cawing as they waited for a safe opening to descend on the feast of carrion.

Vulpes moved toward the dam, where a line of Securitrons stood shoulder to shoulder, blocking the crossing. Heaps of dead lied before them, mostly in Legion red, mowed down by the robots when they had tried to retreat to their camp. As the men approached, the robots' synthetic fingers retracted, and they lifted their gun arms.

_About the collars you wear... I borrowed the idea from a Brotherhood elder._

Boone grabbed at Vulpes' shoulder. With a sudden snarl, the other man rounded on him, his knuckles splitting the skin over Boone's cheekbone and sending him reeling. Vulpes’ PipBoy clattered to the concrete. Boone in turn tackled the spy, and they both fell into the dirt, kicking and clawing. Vulpes had infinitely more skill and experience in close quarters, landing painful blows in the kidneys and ears, but Boone was larger, heavier, and had longer reach, and he did not want to die here, not like this, not now.

_If you tamper with the collars, they will both detonate. If you stray too far from each other, they will detonate._

_If one of you dies, they will detonate._

Vulpes seized the PipBoy from where Boone had dropped it, pinned the sniper down, and began bludgeoning him with it. Boone blocked the first few blows, then reached past the spy's arm to grab his collar and drag him back down into the dirt.

_Your lives are linked now. You must work together, or you will die._

Somebody shouted nearby, but the Securitrons did not fire. Vulpes writhed, tearing free of Boone's grip, and scrambled away into a crouch, panting. Blood ran from his broken nose. Boone stayed on his back for a minute, coughing in the dust they had stirred up, but soon he was lurching to his feet. A few senior rangers were slowly approaching, rifles in hand.

Would they shoot Vulpes the moment they recognized him, he wondered, or would they hear Boone out first and find a way to disable the collars before the execution?

It was the wrong question, he decided a heartbeat later. The right question was, could they disable them?

He couldn't risk it.

He walked over to Vulpes, grabbed his arm, twisted it behind his back, and began hauling him away from the dam. The rangers paused, watching. Vulpes struggled, cursing and threatening in muted Latin, and Boone prayed to any god there might be that nobody would notice.

"He must be cremated," Boone realized Vulpes was hissing as he tried again to wrench himself away, his crazed blue-gray eyes ever darting back toward the dam and the east. "There must be sacrifices."

"Enough has been sacrificed at this godforsaken dam already," Boone finally snapped in low tones. "And you wouldn't find anything but ash there anyway- the fucker's been cremated already."

A thick pillar of smoke rose from the crest of Fortification Hill as the camp, in entirety, burned. Vulpes at last broke free of Boone's commanding grip, but all he did with his freedom was turn to stare at the smoldering, ruined remains of his life. It occurred to Boone that Vulpes might have had a family within the barricaded walls, or the closest thing Legion men had to a family. If not a wife or children, he certainly mourned for his god-king. His world had been turned upside down. This was Vulpes' Carla. And the Courier had told him as much, too- this was where Vulpes would break.

Something disturbingly close to sympathy washed over the sniper, and disgusted, he shook it off. He seized Vulpes by the upper arm, and continued to drag him bodily away from the horror of the battlefield. Vulpes didn't do much to stop him, stumbling easily along beside him, head still turned to the greasy smoke rising from the ridge, mouth slightly open in clear dismay.

They rounded a bend, and Vulpes' face turned back forward, blank. Three NCR troops passed them in the opposite direction, rifles slung pointing downward at an angle on their backs and uniforms stained in dark brown patches, and their glazed eyes skated easily over the pair. Boone eyed them discreetly, steering Vulpes so he was blocked from direct view by the sniper's body. When the trio had passed, Vulpes tugged free, but remained close. A few times, he lifted a hand to his head, feeling for a hat that wasn't there. His fingers lingered on his sweat-dampened hair, then fell away.

They walked in silence for a time, approaching Boulder City. Now and then they crossed paths with armed uniforms. Some strode toward the dam, fresh faced and determined. More moved the other way, limping and bleeding, dead behind the eyes. Those going east were too preoccupied to pay much attention to two more stragglers . Those going west didn't seem to care much about anything.

"We need to find somewhere to hunker down in Boulder City, when we get there," Boone said to Vulpes, breaking the silence. The jagged shadow of Boulder City's ravaged buildings was growing steadily clearer in the distance, above the shimmering blanket of hot air that clung to the land. "Somewhere where we can... figure all this out."

Vulpes kicked a stone out of his path and continued on as if Boone hadn't spoken, walking two paces ahead, damp head bowed slightly under the heat of the sun.

"We have to decide what we're going to do," Boone tried again. Vulpes shot him a disdainful glance from red-rimmed eyes.

"I know what I'm going to do. You can either come with, or you'll die."

"So will you."

"It hardly matters," Vulpes mumbled. He was quiet for a moment, but then he looked at Boone. "The Legate is dead, correct? My shot killed him?"

"I thought that was you," Boone replied, somehow relieved that the Legion dog was talking. His silence had been unnerving. "Yeah. Perfect headshot. Why?"

"What of Lucius?"

"I don't even know who the fuck Lucius is," spat Boone, wiping the grit from his eyes and forehead with the heel of his palm and the back of his wrist. " _Why_."

Vulpes didn't respond, instead choosing to frown intensely at an unremarkable patch of broken blacktop ten feet ahead.

When they came to Boulder City, it was overrun with wounded men and women. NCR troops moved about boldly, but warily, their guns within easy reach. Among them were what appeared to be escaped Legion slaves, looking frail and broken in their baglike tunics and dresses next to the heavily armored soldiers. There were also traders with mercenaries and all, looking quite devastated- perhaps it was the loss of life that disturbed them, but it could well have been the loss of property. Pained groans and screams echoed among the sharp skeletons of buildings. Already, Followers of the Apocalypse were on scene, stoically hauling people about in stretchers or treating wounds. Feral dogs prowled around the knots of people, lean and hungry. Boone wondered if they had been Legion warhounds, left aimless without their masters.

And, like background radiation, handfuls of men darted from structure to structure as aimless as the dogs, keeping to the shadows and gaps where they would be less likely to be seen. Most Boone spotted managed to get out of sight before he could turn his head, but now and then, he would glimpse them before they could completely vanish.

"There are Legionaries here," Boone remarked quietly as he and Vulpes dodged the main bulk of the surviving NCR force, searching for an empty building where they could rest. Maybe they were survivors, or deserters. Vulpes would probably consider them deserters simply because they were alive in defeat, but then, Vulpes was alive too.

He could feel their eyes on him as they ducked under a fallen I-beam and wove between two walls barely standing. Where the NCR had become ignorant in their shock, it seemed what remained of the Legion had become paranoid. Boone spotted a young, lean shirtless man with tan lines that betrayed the Legion armor he had discarded peering down at them from a third story window, but the man only vanished into the heart of the building when he saw Boone's head turn to him. He might be fetching reinforcements, but the sniper's overwhelming suspicion was that these survivors just wanted to disappear while they could. The Legion forcibly recruited from the various tribes and peoples they encountered on their march, Boone recalled. Those born into the Legion might be loyal to a fault, but surely there were a good number forced into it who remembered a better life. A free life.

Boone's perpetual scowl deepened suddenly, and he glanced around the hollow structures for watching eyes. If these men wanted out, then they wouldn't be too thrilled about Vulpes prowling into their hidey hole like a snake after rats. And if they killed Vulpes...

"I don't wear the helmet of the vexillarius out of exuberance for my work," the spy said wryly, plainly reading Boone's concerns from his face. "They won't recognize me. Even most of the Frumentarii barely know my face." His face twisted unpleasantly for the briefest of moments. "Knew."

They slowly moved out of the occupied area. Instead of Legion defectors lurking just out of sight, there were dogs and crows. Soon, they came upon what might once have been a shed behind a larger multi-story building that still had a roof and a door. Making sure he kept within range of Vulpes' collar, he approached, and carefully opened the rusted metal door. Inside was a metal shelving unit full of junk and a few milk crates of old magazines, but it was otherwise empty. He waved the Frumentarius over. Vulpes stood on the threshold, gave it the once over, and stepped inside, apparently satisfied. Boone quickly followed. When the door was closed, he stacked a few of the crates in front of it. It had no lock, but this would keep most intruders out. There were other more promising places to loot, with Boulder City so recently destroyed.

Boone settled along one short wall and took a swig from his canteen. Vulpes sank to the ground against the wall opposite him and did nothing.

"...We need to decide what to do," Boone said, trying to start that conversation again. Vulpes' clear eyes focused scathingly on him. "Because if you try to do any Legion shit," the sniper elaborated, "I will kill you, even if it means I die too."

"Noble."

"Not really. I just don't fucking like you. I've got nothing to live for and it's the Legion's fault."

"So why don't you just kill me?" Vulpes asked dryly, leaning back against the corrugated steel and stretching one leg out in front of him.

"Because I can kill a hell of a lot more of you assholes if I get this collar taken off." He snorted bitterly. "And you can go hunt down your boy toy Lucius and fuck him in the ass until I catch up with you again."

Vulpes just blinked at him, unimpressed by his crude insinuations, and mildly irritated that he was right about their predicament. Neither of them could achieve much with the other tagging along. It would be mutually beneficial to get the collars off before either of them expired.

"I have a technician in the mountains-" Vulpes began, but Boone cut him off with a bitter laugh.

"Ha. Fuck that shit." He reached inside one pocket for a cigarette, and began digging around in another for a lighter. "No. You'll just drag me into your fucking Legion camp and the moment the collar's off, I'm dog food." He made a noise of disgust when he realized his lighter was missing, and left the cigarette unlit in his mouth, dangling precariously to one side. "Now, if we go to McCarran, I know there's somebody there who would know how to defuse these things."

"And I would be shot on sight at long range by one of the men in your old unit. A halfway accurate version of my face is posted on every vertical surface your people find," he grumbled, more than a little bitter. "They know what I look like better than most of the Legion ever did."

"You don't have the hat or the shades. You're a fucking _spy_. You saying you don't have the balls, or are you actually that incompetent?"

At that, Caesar's lap dog narrowed his eyes.

"I'm saying that if, by some act of the gods, we even manage to set foot in McCarran, and if they take the collars off without recognizing me, you would immediately raise an alarm and have me killed." He cocked his head minutely. Mockingly. "Your Republic isn't run so very differently from the Legion, no matter what you may prefer to think."

So McCarran was out, Boone thought grudgingly. But with faction facilities unavailable to them, they had very few options remaining. They could try New Vegas, but it was run by Securitrons, and the Securitrons answered to the Courier, who had already made it clear what he expected of them. Boone wouldn't put it past him to have a kill-on-sight order in place for the pair of them in case they tried to find help within city limits.

Then there were the Boomers. They were friendly with the Courier and therefore somewhat tolerant of Boone in extension, but they remained fiercely independent and isolated from the rest of mankind. They might even be interested enough in the bomb collar technology to help them remove it, and they wouldn't recognize Vulpes at all. And yet, without the Courier, the two of them would almost certainly die just trying to get within shouting distance of their guards.

The Followers wouldn't help. It would be too risky, in their opinion, to try removing the collars, and they would likely think it a best case scenario that an NCR sniper was stuck babysitting Vulpes until one or the other died and took the remaining man with him. The Brotherhood, according to Vulpes, was dead, so they weren't an option.

That left Raul, the Enclave, the Powder Gangers, and the Khans. The Khans didn't have the technical knowledge- they knew chemistry, but engineering was beyond them. The Powder Gangers knew all about explosive devices, but knew Boone was associated with the Courier, and there was no love lost there. The Enclave, Boone was loathe to admit, would be their best hope, but the last he had seen of them they were flying off over the Colorado, and he wasn't sure he could count on Gannon not to kill Vulpes, or let his purist comrades kill either of them. And as for Raul, he had vanished before the battle, muttering something about how he was too old and tired for that shit.

Vulpes looked up at Boone, clearly unhappy. Evidently, he had reached the same conclusions.

"Do you know where your Enclave medic is?"

"No."

"The ghoul?"

"No."

A long silence, and Boone sucked on his cigarette in vain, utterly frustrated. There was a metallic thud as Vulpes let his head fall back against the wall. His chin was up and a stripe of throat above his blinking collar was bared, but his eyes were fixed on Boone.

"It would seem the Courier has boxed us in."

Boone just grunted, turning his eyes to the scrap metal and junk lining the shelves along the wall to his left.

"Maybe we can find a robot that would know how to defuse these collars."

Vulpes sneered. Boone gave a huff of cynical laughter, and took the cigarette from his mouth. He propped his arm over one bent knee and stared at it witheringly.

Something clattered across the sheet metal he was sitting on. The sniper looked up to his unwilling companion, and then down to the lighter that had been tossed at him. With a sigh of utter relief, Boone snatched it up and lit the cigarette, immediately taking a deep drag of it, reveling in the comfort of nicotine and tobacco.

"That's some pretty fancy technology for the Legion, doghead," he remarked dryly, tossing the lighter back to its owner. Vulpes caught it easily and tucked it away.

For several minutes, they sat quietly. The smoke from Boone's cigarette drifted to the ceiling and ghosted away through the rust holes and crooked joins in the construction. There were footsteps outside, but they never paused, and soon drifted out of earshot.

"There is only one course of action," Vulpes said quietly as Boone lit a fresh cigarette with the smoldering butt of his first, "The Courier must be put down."

"And that's going to magically solve our little bomb collar problem?"

"If he wanted us dead, he would have killed us months ago. He expects something from us, but he doesn't want to kill us."

"You'll find the answers," Boone said suddenly, freezing with his cigarette halfway to his mouth. Then, with it tucked neatly between two fingers, he lifted his other arm and began pecking at the PipBoy that the Courier had put on him while Vulpes watched with a look of weary indifference to his counterpart's sudden frenzy.

Boone pressed play on the audio file that had been left for him, and it filled the shed with tinny sound. The Courier's voice was like venom, growling smoothly through the static and whine of the equipment.

" _Hello, Craig. Ave, Vulpes._ " Vulpes' eye twitched violently. " _Do you understand now? Do you see? Come find me. Find me in the Divide, and you'll find the answers. The answers to the questions you wanted to ask, and the questions you could never put to words._ "

Boone paused the recording, and looked to the Legionary.

"He said we would 'find the answers.' Is this supposed to be some kind of twisted walkabout?" He stood, then began pacing a tight circuit. The cigarette returned to his mouth; he breathed smoke as he turned and turned in the tight space, and the embers glowed in the dim. Vulpes pulled his legs to his chest and watched Boone stalk to and fro, tense and wary. Boone stopped mid-stride, and pointed down at Vulpes.

"He, the Courier- he felt some connection with you. With both of us. He said we weren't all so different." Cigarette moved to hand, and twin bursts of smoke shot from his nose as he contemplated the wall. "I think maybe he wants to make us like him. Or something. I don't fucking know."

"We both need him dead," Vulpes repeated, "and he can take the collars off. And if he has no intentions to kill us... " He shrugged slightly. "Two birds..."

"Yeah, and we're one big angry stone," Boone resigned, dropping his cigarette and crushing it under one heel. "Fine. You're right. But we still need to get to this 'Divide' alive, wherever the fuck it is."

"I know where it is."

"Good," said Boone, sounding anything but thrilled about the whole thing. "Then we'll leave tomorrow evening, and get this over with."


	2. Chapter 2

Despite their exhaustion, neither bear nor bull got much sleep that night. Every time Boone or Vulpes drifted off, instinct jerked them awake again. Countless times during the night, Boone would open his eyes and see Vulpes staring intently, if tiredly, at him, face illuminated in flashes of ghastly red as his collar blinked away in the abject darkness. Vulpes himself would continually doze off and let his forehead fall against his knees, and then look up again some indeterminable time later to find the sniper watching in return.

When morning came and light began to filter through the holes and cracks in the shed, they rose without speaking to each other. Uncomfortable, Boone nearly left the shed on his own to find food and water before he remembered his bomb collar. He glanced to Vulpes, and found the man adjusting his gear so he wasn't clearly Legion or NCR, keeping the duster but picking the bear patch from its shoulder thread by thread with the tip of a small knife.

"You look like shit," Boone grumbled around the grit in his throat. Both of Vulpes' eyes were bruised black underneath, and there was a gash down to the cartilage on the bridge of his broken nose. Vulpes gave Boone a flat look, blinked, and went back to pulling loose threads from the duster's sleeve. Judging by the spy's blasé response, he wasn't looking so hot himself. Gingerly, he pressed the pads of his fingers to his cheekbone, wincing as he applied gentle pressure to the swollen, taut flesh. His fingers came away wet with bloody pus. Great.

"We need to resupply before we leave," Boone said. His voice was gravelly from previous day's ordeals and a sleepless night. Vulpes met his eyes and remained silent, but followed without complaint when Boone shifted the boxes in front of the door and slipped out into the gray Boulder City morning. They walked a few yards apart, picking through the rubble for pre-war food that might have been missed by other scavengers in the aftermath of the city's destruction. A few times, one or the other wandered too far off and the collars began sounding their warning. Boone's heart leapt into his throat each time, and he would immediately search for Vulpes and find him looking alert and alarmed. As if choreographed, they quickly stumbled over shattered concrete and plaster or vaulted over the remnants of low walls until they stood mere feet apart, wild-eyed with pulses racing.

They found two tins of spam and a jar of what Vulpes identified as gecko jerky with an appraising sniff. It wouldn't last them long, but it would be enough to start on, and they could always hunt along the way. Boone could make easy work of anything smaller than a deathclaw with his rifle-

His rifle. Horrified, Boone ran a hand over his collarbone where the rifle strap should have been. How had he not noticed it before now? He must have dropped it when the Courier had drugged him and dragged him off. Vulpes had had one too, judging by his crack shot through the Legate's skull, but it was also missing.

His thoughts shifted to the NCR occupying part of the ruined city. If he identified himself, they might arm him, and even give him supplies, but there would be no way to hide Vulpes from him. They could only get some five yards apart before the bomb collars complained. And how to explain the collars?

Still, the thought of relying on Vulpes' close combat skills to keep them alive was more troubling than trying to get a gun from comrades.

"I lost my sniper rifle," Boone said as he and Vulpes carefully traversed a section of rubble, watching for signs of Legion deserters. "I need to replace it."

"A rifle like that won't be easy to find in a place like this," the Frumentarius replied quietly as he moved a few feet off to kick at some half buried shape in the sand and plaster dust. Boone compensated, taking a few steps to the side and slowing to a stop when Vulpes crouched down to pick at whatever it was with his hands.

"The NCR might have one, and they would give it to me."

"And they would shoot me. It's too risky."

"They might not recognize you. You do have that duster," Boone pointed out, uncomfortably aware that it had been pilfered from a freshly dead soldier on the battlefield. "And you _are_ beat all to hell."

"I don't deal in maybes," Vulpes said flatly, looking back at Boone. Boone sighed, rolled his eyes, and turned his back on the Legion dog. "They'll smell a rat when they see the collars."

"Who's the rat in this scenario, you, or the Courier?"

Vulpes didn't deign to answer, but Boone heard the rubble crunch under his feet as he stood. He looked over his shoulder to see that Vulpes had unearthed a semi-mummified skeleton in NCR gear. It was hardly surprising; the city had been the site of a massive showdown between the two armies before what was left of it fell. Intrigued by an idea, the sniper moved closer.

"I bet they would be _twice_ as interested in helping us if we were _both_ NCR."

"And they'll still be suspicious," Vulpes reiterated, grabbing the side of his own collar irritably and showing it to Boone in case he had forgotten about it in the past five seconds.

"Not if we cover them up. We could cut up some of your old clothes-"

"I am not traversing the Mojave dressed as profligate _scum_!" The spy's jaw was set, and there was venom in his eyes.

"Well, you won't get too far west in Legion red, will you?!" Boone snarled right back.

"I got plenty far every time before."

"Well, let's see how far you get without me, because I'm not taking another step until you change uniform and we make stormchasers out of your fucking rags. The only weapons we've got between us are a pistol and a couple of knives. _We need firepower!_ "

Both men stood stock still, bristling as they glared at each other. Finally, Vulpes eyes narrowed, but he crouched down to disrobe the corpse, though he made it clear with every sharp motion that it rankled him. Without reservation, he stripped off his own clothes and began tugging on the found uniform, frowning distastefully at the stiff stains decomposition had left. Boone blinked and averted his eyes; maybe such casual nudity was normal in the Legion, with its open tents and crowded camps, but in the NCR, nakedness was reserved for the intimacy of the bedroom and the sexlessness of infancy. He couldn't equate Vulpes Inculta, one of the greatest evils in the Mojave, with either.

The sound of a blade ripping through cloth drew his attention back to the Frumentarius. Vulpes was in the act of cutting his faded black man skirt into two long swathes. When his blade tore through the last stretch, he balled up one of the wide strips of cloth and threw it at Boone, who caught it against his chest. It stank of blood and sweat. He wasn't eager to have it wrapped up near his face. Vulpes glowered with his knife still in hand, as if daring him to complain. Boone just shook his head to clear it from his mind.

"Little wonder your compatriots die so easily, with so little armor," Vulpes groused, lifting his arms slightly and then letting them fall back to his sides. The uniform didn't fit him well, being too long in sleeve and leg and rather too baggy all around, but then, most recruits didn't get clothes that really fit them until they'd earned some favor with the higher ups or worked their way further up the ranks. It wouldn't be too unusual to see a soldier in clothes too big, and it helped make Vulpes seem more harmless. But then, no green recruit would look so damn _sure_ of himself.

"We're going to get caught for sure if you can't fucking act the part."

Vulpes growled something Boone assumed to be quite rude in Latin under his breath as he brushed past him, his Legion clothes bundled together with sleeves tied into a knot and slung across him like a bandolier. A few shadows of Legion deserters scattered as they approached and went by; the Frumentarius shot cold, sharp looks into the dark buildings where his one-time subordinates no doubt hid. Boone remained dubious. They might not know he was Caesar's left hand, but they surely knew he was Legion now, and high ranked at that- they would have seen his dark armor when he changed clothes. A backwards glance revealed the deserters reconvening behind them, and men following at a distance, clinging to the fading shadows. A tendril of dread coiled in Boone's chest, but he shook it off when they emerged into a street and their stalkers stopped following.

When they got closer to the band of NCR, they paused to wrap the rags around their collars. It was well worn, and the persistent blinking light shone through, but only if you really looked for it. And it positively _stank_ of war and death. Boone might have commented on it if Vulpes didn't have a stretch of the same cloth wound neatly around his neck and the lower portion of his face, leaving only his baleful eyes and dark hair visible. With the contrast of the bruises on his pale skin, he looked particularly ghastly in the daylight.

The NCR soldiers were up, but inactive in the growing heat. A great many of them sat on the ground in clusters. Wounded lied in whimpering rows, and harrowed medics walked among them with jugs of water and recycled bandages washed and sterilized but still stained gray with old blood. One medic with dark skin and a scarred face wiped his bloody hands with a rag as he inscrutably watched them pass, then rubbed his sternum as though he suffered chest pains. His hands left a fresh red smear across his smock. Both men looked over the makeshift infirmary and the desolation of the camp beyond, cautious but dispassionate. Boone had long since learned to compartmentalize; Vulpes simply didn't care about the suffering of his enemy. As they passed by the infirmary, Boone noticed he stood a little straighter, more attentive- maybe on edge, walking into the lion's den- but apparently unconcerned in a way that only seemed genuine coming from him.

They began to draw attention when they really got into the heart of the NCR encampment. There were plenty of Followers and traders in the camp, but not so many that two new faces went unnoticed. All around were people in worn fatigues and dusters; Vulpes had counted forty or fifty by the time Boone had found the woman who looked to be the acting quartermaster of the company. She was standing in the elbow of two tables the soldiers had scavenged from the buildings and placed perpendicularly, end to end, on the side of the street. One table was empty but for a neat stack of small caliber ammunition on the free end. The other table was loaded two duffel bags deep. The quartermaster was in the middle of inspecting the contents of one of the bags. When she saw Boone she nodded in greeting; she turned to the young soldier standing across from her, signed a paper resting on the top of the heap, and sent him away with it before beckoning the sniper over. Vulpes followed, well aware that she hadn't gestured to him, but reluctant to risk the collar sounding off in the middle of a crowded enemy camp.

"First Recon," the woman acknowledged as she zipped up the duffel and hoisted it up into heavily muscled arms. "Thought your lot retreated to McCarran when the shit hit the fan." The duffel dropped with a heavy thump to the dusty ground, and she shoved it under the table with a scuffed boot.

"I'm technically retired, ma'am," Boone admitted. He didn't want to risk claiming current deployment only to be checked out and discovered. Truth, he decided, was the best way to lie. "Name's Boone. Corporal Craig Boone. When I heard troops were moving to the dam, I dug out my rifle and fell in."

Well, it wasn't _not_ true. The quartermaster squinted at him carefully before a smile stained grim and bitter by their defeat grew on her blunt face.

"A vet, volunteering for duty on the front lines." She shook her head, laughed, and her smile became larger, half incredulous. "All out of the goodness of your heart?" Boone felt himself frown.

"No. The Legion killed my wife and child."

Her  face suddenly went carefully blank, and she blinked and looked away from Boone. Vulpes must have made some noise of faint reprobation at the sniper's declaration, because he suddenly found himself under the woman's scrutiny.

"Who's this?" Her eyes were dark, near black, and sharply perceptive. Vulpes watched them flick over him from head to toe, taking in his clothes and bearing, but he kept quiet.

"An acquaintance. Uh, Espinoza. Matteo Espinoza. Found him taking pot shots at Fiends outside of Freeside a while back. We were both up on the western ridge over the dam. He's still... rattled." Boone made a vague gesture near his temple, and the quartermaster's eyebrows twitching in understanding. Vulpes resisted the urge to scowl outright, and gamely pretended Boone's insinuation had escaped him.

"Where'd he get the uniform, if he isn't NCR?"

"He joined up a while back," Boone said. Leaning in, he quietly added, "Platoon got hit by a mortar. He's taking it hard."

"I'll say." The woman blinked dubiously at Vulpes, but then held out a hand to Boone, who shook it firmly. "I'm Sergeant Hanover. I take it you didn't come over here for my pretty face and pleasant company, though."

Vulpes continued to look vaguely around the encampment as the pair talked, counting soldiers and watching the figures that slipped quietly from building to building. One of them stopped and stared at him from across the street. Vulpes lifted his hand slowly to his head, ran it back through his hair, then wiped at his nose with his knuckle through the fabric of his makeshift collar cozy. He and the figure turned away at the same time.

"We just don't have any," Hanover was telling Boone. "To be honest, most of our weaponry is still right where it fell at the dam. We'd try to recover it, but those damn robots would probably interpret that as violent intent and vaporize the poor bastard who drew the short straw. Besides," she added apologetically, "with all these Legion stragglers hanging around Boulder City, we need to keep what arms and ammunition we have close."

Boone raised his eyebrows, and Vulpes' head turned slightly to better listen in.

"So you noticed them," the sniper said quietly. Hanover all but rolled her eyes.

"Hard not to. They might not have confronted us yet, but they're always close by. Most of the men seem to think they're deserters, but I'm not so sure. They seem awful organized for that, and not one of them has tried to contact us." She wrinkled her nose. "Doesn't feel right to me."

Boone resisted the urge to turn to Vulpes, who he could see from the corner of his eye curling a fist against the fabric over his mouth as if holding back a cough. If the Legion had something planned, Vulpes would know about it- as Boone understood it, the man was about as high in the ranks of the Legion as anyone could get, and an intelligence agent to boot. If Lanius had been the brawn of the army, then Vulpes was certainly the brains. It wouldn't be surprising if whatever the Legion skulkers were preparing for was a contingency the Frumentarius had cooked up months, or even years ago.

"If you outfit us," Boone tried one last time, "we could be a valuable asset against these Legionaries."

"Thanks, but no thanks, Recon. I'd like to make it home without a court marshal. If you want a rifle that badly, head back to the dam. Take a chance at scavenging."

They left Hanover to move the rest of the duffels, stalking side by side back through the camp the way they had come. When they reached the relative calm of the triage bay, Vulpes seized Boone roughly by the arm, stopping him in his tracks.

"The profligate was lying. Those bags were full of ammunition, including a large amount of .308 shells. There's no reason to stockpile the ammunition if they don't have rifles that use them." He scowled at Boone, mouth hidden but eyes slightly narrowed. Somehow, his lean face seemed more menacing when only those icy eyes were bared. "Tell me- are you _any_ good with a weapon that puts you within range of the blood spatter?"

The pair stared daggers at each other, properly annoyed.

"Is that a question, or a jab?"

"A question." The fox's words were sharp and brittle. Boone exhaled slowly, resenting his traveling companion more and more with each passing minute.

"'Good?' I guess," the sniper finally growled, walking again and forcing Vulpes to follow in his wake. "You learn that shit in basic. But great? No. Don't expect me to win any knife fights."

"I look forward to gutting you when it comes to it, then," Vulpes murmured, and then, even more quietly, "if we last that long." They passed the last few knots of soldiers; the guards posted on the outskirts watched them carefully, but respected the red beret. When they were out of earshot, Boone picked up the conversation where is had previously derailed.

"I'm not going to kill an NCR sniper for his gun."

Vulpes shrugged, just the vaguest cock of the head and lift of the shoulder.

"Let me rephrase. I'm not going to murder anyone for a gun, and I'm not going to let you anywhere near any sniper that might be stationed in this camp, either."

"I could hardly care less if you had a rifle or not, _Corporal,_ but we do need proper weapons if we're going to survive our foray across the Mojave."

"Across the- where exactly is this Divide?"

Vulpes turned down an alley, forcing Boone to follow.

"An NCR soldier should know." The fox looked through the crumbling doorway of a two story building, then stepped over the rubble to go inside. "Your people were trying to annex it for years. It was a secure route between east and west."

"Was?" The pair moved up a set of stairs to the shell of the second floor. There were no signs that anybody was using this building; it would be a good place to settle for the next several hours.

"The city sat on pre-war missile silos. Six years ago, they detonated."

"You're talking about Ashton," Boone realized. "They said it was the Legion that did it." He walked to a window and peered out. He could see the bulk of the camp  a block or two down. The streets were otherwise empty and silent, but for the breeze-driven trash and tumbleweeds that aimlessly rustled and roamed.

"It wasn't." Vulpes was gingerly opening and closing crooked drawers in a beat up old bureau, seeing what was left behind. "Our forces were there, but they didn't do it. One of my Frumentarii reported a package was sent by courier, addressed from the NCR. It carried a signaling device that activated the bombs."

Boone scoffed, and looked back.

"You're lying." But Vulpes wasn't listening. He had stopped in the middle of closing a drawer, and was staring, troubled, at the peeling laminate on the bureau.

"Sent by courier," the spy repeated quietly, and then he mumbled something to himself in Latin. He closed the drawer and walked slowly to the center of the room, and then, almost angrily, "A package sent by _courier_."

"Hey," Boone said, disturbed, hoping it would distract Vulpes from his sudden, halting, _worrying_ change in behavior. For one brief moment, he was frozen, eyes twitching  but then his expression smoothed to one of stony deadpan. He stood there stiffly for a long moment, just staring at the sniper, and  then he abruptly broke away to take another glance out the window. Suspicion struck Boone, and he looked out the next window down. Nothing remarkable. Whatever Vulpes had seen out there that was so interesting had either moved out of sight, or the Legion dog was losing it.

Well, he _had_ just lost everything. And he _was_ leashed to the Courier's pet NCR sniper.

Boone sighed heavily. Seeing a battered chair overturned and half buried in rubble, he kicked away a few large chunks of plaster and crumbling cinderblock and set it back on its feet.

"Hey. I got a question." Vulpes ignored him, still standing pensive in what Boone took to be the Legion's version of attention. The sick fuck probably fell in instinctively, considering the long hours the Courier implied he pulled standing at Caesar's side. What a trick, plotting, spying, and boot-licking all at the same time. "What the fuck did you see in the Legion to make you so gung-ho? Honestly?"

Vulpes gave him a _look_ that burned through his carefully manufactured mask of indifference before he stepped away from the window to perch delicately on a level patch of a heap of fallen bricks to mirror the sniper.

"The Dam is the furthest east you've ever been," came his reply, in the steady, smooth tone Boone hadn't heard since their conversation above Cottonwood Cove. Complete, calculated confidence. But was this just another part of his act, to cover up how deeply rattled he was? His bizarre moodswings weren't that quickly forgotten.

"The Fort," Boone corrected, and Vulpes almost laughed at the insignificance of it.

"You've never been to Utah. Colorado. Arizona." He pulled his knife from his boot and began picking fastidiously at his nails. "The disease, the chems, the death..." Those piercing eyes turned up from the steel of the blade to glance appraisingly at Boone. "Before Caesar, tribes would form and die off in a matter of years. Wars were waged over petty squabbles. They were lands ruled by the cruel and unjust."

"Because the Legion is so fucking benevolent."

"Caesar ensured survival," said Vulpes. "He brought the tribes under him, and led with a firm hand. The laws are strict, but not without purpose or reason. There are no more chem addicts in Legion lands. The roads are safe. Children survive their infancy. There is food enough, and clean water. He made us equal."

"He made you slaves."

"He _freed_ me," Vulpes insisted almost zealously, leaning forward to bore holes into Boone with his cold, cold eyes. "And for that, I will always be true to Caesar."

Boone shook his head in utter disbelief, only too aware of how keenly Vulpes was watching him, and how tightly he still held his knife.

"Can you say as much for your Republic?" Vulpes asked quietly, his velvet voice tainted with something insidious. This gave Boone pause. He didn't respond, choosing instead to pick dry, flaking blood from the knee of his trousers. He had been right there with the Courier when it became clear that the sharecroppers outside of New Vegas were starving, and would have fled if not for their indentured status and the armed guards at the gaps in the barbed wire fence. He had know countless soldiers drafted for active service, and more who were only in it to feed starving family back home in the west. Without the Followers of the Apocalypse, the ranks on the front line would likely have dissolved under the combined weight of warfare and vice, where the Legion thrived in battle chem-free. The NCR threw the Powder Gangers into a prison. Caesar would have beaten them down, but he also would have given them armor, food, and explosives and sent them back out to do what they were good at.

He could say what he liked about the culture of the Legion, but they were sleek and healthy on the whole. Cruel and fucked up, guilty of horrific acts, but _healthy_ , and disturbingly efficient.

Maybe... maybe Caesar _had_ improved their lives, for them to be so loyal.

Boone growled to himself, and shook his head vigorously, pulling off his beret to rub at his scalp as if that would squash the thought from his mind. These were the people who had kidnapped his wife and unborn child, who would have made them slaves. Death is better than living in such cruelty. Across from him, something that could almost be classified as a grim smile ghosted across Vulpes' face.

The sun slowly descended. Dogs barked; the sound echoed eerily off the crumbling walls. The glow of NCR campfires lit the buildings a few blocks down orange against blue-black.

"We need to go," Boone decided at last, standing and moving to a window, peering out into the night. "I still have my sidearm and a few magazines, and you've got your knife-"

He turned and froze. Vulpes had a rusty .32 fixed on his chest. Slowly, Boone raised his empty hands.

"We aren't leaving yet."

"If you shoot me-"

"You'll be in great pain," Vulpes cut in calmly. "I only die if you do."

Boone took a slow step to the right, and the gun stayed trained, level and steady. Boone could feel his pistol at his side. If he could disable Vulpes... but no. He'd still have the collars to contend with, and carrying a bleeding, struggling man through Boulder City and to god-knows-where... it didn't seem feasible. And if Vulpes did die, he'd be right on his heels.

But then, Vulpes would have the same problems.

"And what do you plan on doing after you've shot me, huh? Watch me bleed out until your head explodes?" Boone snorted bitterly, and took at step toward Vulpes, who coolly pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

Boone lunged forward, but Vulpes flung the gun in his face. It smashed into his cheekbone, reopening the split Vulpes' knuckles had put there only a day earlier. Boone faltered long enough for the fox to dodge, and Boone plowed into the wall, knocking plaster dust from what remained of the ceiling. The Frumentarius' arms hooked around him, and he found himself in a painful headlock with one arm wrenched painfully at an upward angle and his chin pulled down into his chest, the spy at his back. He grabbed for Vulpes with his free arm, but then he felt the kiss of sharp steel under his jaw.

He let himself be tugged backwards toward the window. Vulpes was silent except for his heavy breath somewhere near Boone's shoulder.

"What are you doing," Boone growled. He struggled with little success, only managing to make his shoulder burn and turn his head far enough to glimpse Vulpes up-nodding sharply through the open window.

A moment later, Vulpes released the headlock, hand darting quickly to take Boone's gun before he could reach for it himself.

"Sit," he ordered. Boone hesitated, then complied, returning to his chair. This gun would work, and Vulpes seemed eager to see him bleed.

"What are you doing?" Boone asked again. It was beginning to feel as though Vulpes had been playing him like a goddamn piano. Still, he was ignored. His companion just watched him, his cool only betrayed by the visible pulse behind his bomb collar.

"Ave," a voice said softly, and Boone nearly gave himself whiplash as he spun in his seat. There in the door stood the medic they had passed on their way into the NCR camp, still wearing his blood-stained frock.

"True to Caesar," Vulpes prompted expectantly.          

"True to Caesar."

The medic entered the room, and stood at attention. Vulpes watched him from the corner of his eye, but remained facing Boone, holding his aim. Then, they spoke. Boone only understood a few words of the rapid Latin. There was mention of Lucius again, whoever he was, and the Legate. And then, both Legion dogs were looking at him.

" _Ipse_ sniper," Vulpes said, nodding towards Boone.

" _Et tibi?_ "

"Something versatile. And a blade. Make haste."

The medic slipped away.

"Another one of your spies?" Boone asked.

"My eyes and ears are everywhere," Vulpes murmured in response. "Spies don't traditionally wind up on the front line."

"Except you."

"By choice."

They waited. Vulpes settled back onto his pile of bricks, arm braced against his knee and gun still pointing at Boone. The night was quiet. Boone kept waiting for a gunshot to pierce the silence, or a scream, but it never did. Soon enough, the medic returned with two guns slung over his shoulder. At his rear was another man, wearing sections of standard Legionary armor. This one had a small duffel on his back.

"Ave," the medic spy said, and he laid the weapons on the splintering desk. At long last, Vulpes tucked Boone's gun into his belt and went to inspect what his men had brought. Hesitant, Boone stood, and edged close enough to get a good look for himself. They had scrounged up nice weaponry- somewhere they had found a matte black rifle with a scope and a suppressor, near identical to what he had been issued as part of the First Recon. There was also a decent enough assault rifle. The medic went on to produce a pair of machetes in leather sheaths, which he loosed a few inches to display a clean, sharp blade. The medic's companion set the duffel on the desk next to the guns and unzipped it to show the ammunition, food, and clean water that was packed inside. Boone was surprised to see a stimpak poking up out of a pile of .308 boxes.

"This is sufficient," the fox said, delicately shifting the contents of the bag around and zipping it back up. Boone watched from his corner, well aware that the second Legionary was glancing suspiciously between the sniper and the spy, frowning at their twin collars. Vulpes noticed, and took a step towards him, cowing the other man.

"This is the one you mentioned? he asked the medic, who nodded.

"He claims to have been guarding the entrance to Caesar's tent."

The Legionary's gaze dropped instantly to his feet as he felt the Frumentarius evaluating him.

"Is this true?"

"Yes, sir."

"And what happened?"

"Shortly after the main force struck for the Dam, Lord Caesar collapsed. The Praetorian guard took him to his private quarters. I was ordered to guard the entrance to the private quarters with another Legionary. There were noises like machinery, and then the Praetorians left. They told me to hold my post."

"What of Lucius?"

"He left with the rest of the guard. I heard him say he intended to bring the Legate Lanius back to the Fort."

"What then?"

"There were explosions in the Fort. The Praetorians were gone, so we decided to evacuate Lord Caesar. He was dead."

"You are sure?"

The Legionary squirmed where he stood.

"Yes... yes sir. His... head. Was open."

Boone could see Vulpes' jaw clench.

"And so you left."

"...Yes, sir."

Vulpes casually turned away, once again intently examining the weapons. He ran his fingers over the grip of the hunting rifle, then let his hand rest on the hilt of a machete.

"You have done well, reporting to me." Vulpes looked almost benign, his gaze downturned, but something dark lingered unpleasantly in the undertones. He turned his head minutely toward the relieved Legionary, calculating.

"Thank you, s-aghhk!"

Vulpes struck like a viper, and swung the blade of a machete down into the deserter's neck, severing muscle and tendon before it came to a halt in his spine with a sickening wet crunch. The medic took a hasty step back, eyes a bit twitchy but otherwise apparently just uneager to get bloodier than he already was. As the man fell, Vulpes gave the machete an angled tug and it squelched free with a dramatic spurt of blood. Still clinging to life, the Legionary scrabbled at the wound on his crimson throat with his opposite hand, gurgling and choking. His lips foamed red, worked soundlessly for a moment, and then he was still.

"You abandoned your post," Vulpes told the corpse calmly, wiping the blood from the machete and sheathing it, "and your sentence has been served." He looked back to the medic spy. "Continue your work here. The Legion stands."


	3. Chapter 3

They left that night, before the bloody corpse on the floor could start attracting wildlife.

Vulpes had looped a machete to his belt and slung the hunting rifle and duffle bag over his shoulder. Then, he drew Boone's sidearm, pointedly met the sniper's gaze, and set it down on the desk next to the remaining machete and rifle before taking a few steps back. Still shaken and wary, Boone had sidestepped to the desk, blindly holstering the pistol, shoving the machete in his belt, and taking up the sniper rifle while he kept his eyes on the Frumentarius.

For a moment, they had stared appraisingly at each other over the still-warm corpse lying in the rubble between them, but then Boone sighed tensely. There was nothing he could do to stop Vulpes' little machinations, not until the Courier had been dealt with. They still shared a common, overarching goal.

"What's the best way to the Divide?"

Vulpes blinked, and seemed to mull it over as he began gingerly stepping through the debris toward the stairs.

"Quarry Junction is fastest," he finally said as the pair of them descended. "but looping south through Novac and Nipton has been more secure. More people, but fewer deathclaws."

"People might be more of a threat," Boone grumbled, foul-tempered. "We won't find many friends on the road." And he didn't want to explain Vulpes to anybody in Novac. It rankled him enough just to know that the most wanted man in the Legion had apparently passed by his home unnoticed with such regularity.

Vulpes gave him an unreadable look as they left the building, and he looped his thumb under the bomb collar. The motion was becoming as much a nervous tic as it was a reminder to the sniper of their predicament. Boone could see the captivity eating at Vulpes. He felt it too. But then, it wasn't the NCR that had been blown to smithereens, and it didn't fall to Boone to pick up the pieces. If the spy had been anything but Legion, he might have pitied him.

"I disagree. _These_ pose the greater threat. Deathclaws aside, Quarry Junction remains a _quarry_ : steep cliffs, narrow paths, and loose gravel. One slip and we'll be separated." He picked his way over some concrete rubble, hand resting on the hilt of his machete, and then he glanced sidelong at Boone. "No cliffs on the southern road."

"You think we can travel that far under everybody's noses without being found out? You said it yourself- your face is glued to every vertical surface between Reno and the Dam, and people _know_ me. We should take the Quarry."

"I would prefer to survive whatever your Courier has planned," Vulpes said mildly. Irritation bubbled just under the surface of his voice. "Even if it takes a few extra days of _this_. He will not have the satisfaction of ending me." Boone said nothing, but his stubborn opposition must have been clear on his stony face, because Vulpes fixed his eyes on him sharply as he continued. "I am the Frumentarius Summus, Caesar's left hand. It has been my _duty_ these past years to move undetected. I did not earn my position through bribery or politics- I am the _best_ at what I do. When I say the southern pass is the better option, it is not my _preference_ , it is _fact._ You can choose not to recognize my affiliations, but to argue my experience is nothing short of idiocy. _"_

Boone grunted, surly, and looked intently away, fixing his eyes at random on the burnt out shell of an automobile a few hundred yards out in the wastes.  Vulpes accepted it as the concession it was. Whether he liked the man or not, Boone knew that this was what Vulpes _did_. Arguing it might make him feel better about eventually having to give Vulpes his way, but at best it wasted time, and at worst it could get him killed. He wasn't so foolhardy that he couldn't recognize when to shut up and fall in.

As if reading his mind, Vulpes spoke again, his voice muffled by his makeshift stormchaser but still clearly wry.

"And if anything needs killing at any great distance, I will be sure to consult."

Despite both himself and the half-insulting tone the spy had taken, Boone gave a single humorless huff of laughter that went- thankfully- unacknowledged.

New course decided, they left the road and veered southwest, cutting a corner and taking a shortcut towards Route 95. Maybe it was better this way, after all- they would avoid the 188 Trading Post. Boone was fairly well known there, from both his time with the Courier and the many months before during his deployment with the First Recon. There was also the Brotherhood girl to consider. She had left the Courier, but Boone found it hard to believe she would go back to the bunker. It was little more than a mausoleum now, and the thought of all those bodies left to desiccate in the dark tunnels... it was enough to make _him_ shudder. It seemed more likely that the girl would go back to the trading post. From the way she talked, it sounded like she had practically lived there before joining up with Six anyway.

He really, really didn't want to run into her now, after all the Courier had done, and not because he feared her. Not exactly, anyway. He just couldn't imagine a scenario where conversation would leave him anything but nauseous with a heavy knot of tension in his gut, the kind that makes his heartbeat visible in the waver of his hands. Not to mention the fact that Vulpes would be standing right there with him, and he had no idea how the girl would react.

They walked quietly for hours in the cool of the night, both men preoccupied. Three times they paused; the first time, Vulpes came to a halt behind the cover of a wrecked vehicle and stripped out of the death-stained NCR uniform. His skirt had been sacrificed for the sake of their disguise (and promptly stowed away with some relief on both their parts the moment they left the city), but it seemed the Legion dog's spies in Boulder City had packed him some nondescript black leather armor. He quickly tugged it on as Boone watched the horizon, then shrugged his stolen duster back over his shoulders and shoved the dirty fatigues into the duffel beside the heaps of ammunition.

The second time, the spy had lifted a hand in an instinctive Legion handsign- arm outstretched towards Boone, palm out. The NCR shared this signal, and acting just as much on muscle memory as Vulpes was, he froze in his tracks and took up his rifle, pointing it at a glimmer in the distance that Vulpes was tuned in on.

"Ants," he said, peering down the scope and seeing a dozen of the monsters creeping in the distant haze, moonlight shining off their exoskeletons.

He spent the next fifteen minutes picking them off, lying flat on the desert floor with the Legion spy pacing semi-circles around him, his own hunting rifle in hand as he scanned for approaching hostiles. The boom of gunfire echoed thunderously across the cracked earth.

The third time they stopped, it was when they literally stumbled upon a cluster of skeletons camouflaged by the general rubble that littered the dry lake bed. Vulpes crouched down with mild interest when he spotted faded red fabric and used his machete to shift the remains. Little but bones and scraps of clothing remained; they left the site with no more knowledge than they had come to it with.

It was a few hours before dawn when they spotted the shattered remnants of Route 95. Of more immediate interest to them, however, was the campfire burning merrily below a Sunset Sarsaparilla billboard, and the long shadow of a man it cast up against the cheerful painted face of the boy in the cowboy hat. Echoing strangely over the parched earth came the slow, wistful twang of a guitar. Not any of the old, familiar tunes that ran over and over on the radio, either- the shadow sprawling across the advertisement picked thoughtfully at a genuine guitar, its curves outlined in oblique.

The music paused as they approached, the notes resonating and fading as the musician peered out past the glare of his fire.

"If you're friendly, come on and sit. If not, well. I got a big gun and the guts to use it, but not much else worth havin'." And then the music continued where it left off, meandering as the man felt out a tune.

The fox's face was blank when Boone glanced his way, and with a twitch of a shrug, the sniper moved to the fire. The stranger looked up from his guitar long enough to get a good look at him and give him a welcoming nod before returning his attention to the thrumming strings of his instrument. Boone was aware of Vulpes moving silently behind him, skirting the fire to remain slightly in shadow before settling himself against the steel post of the billboard, gazing out into the desert.

"You boys are lookin' a little worse for the wear," the drifter said calmly over the melodious hum of his strings. "You come from the Dam, I imagine."

He looked up again, his dark, placid eyes shifting smoothly from Boone to Vulpes and back again, before he turned his gaze down to the frets, changing key.

"I heard the fighting from all the way out here," the drifter continued, his voice still warm and relaxed. "Even saw an airplane- in all my years, I never expected to see something like that."

"Boomers," Boone obliged in a grumble, unscrewing the top of his canteen to take a gulp of dusty river water.

"That lot up in the old air force base, you mean? I guess I never woulda expected to see them in my lifetime, neither." There was a long moment of peaceful quiet between them. The only sound was the breeze rattling against the old billboard and the meandering notes the drifter plucked from his guitar. Vulpes settled deeper against the post and all but vanished into his duster, head poking above his bent knees, just a dark crop of hair and cold eyes that stared unseeing out into the desert. Boone dug some gecko jerky out of his pack and began gnawing at a piece; he offered some to their "host," but the drifter waved it away with a flick of his strumming hand and a shake of his head.

"Nah, I figure you can use it more than I can. Me, I'm just wandering from place to place. When I stop liking it here, well, I figure I'll just pick up and carry on. You fellas, I reckon you two have some place to be." When he looked at them this time, his dark eyes were a little more keen. Vulpes glanced briefly his way, then turned his face away so the fire only caught the angle of his nose and his bruised, swollen cheekbones. The collar of the duster was pulled up over his bomb collar. If the drifter noticed the blinking red light at his or Boone's throats, he didn't say anything about it.

It was a moment before Boone realized the music had stopped, the last note trailing off into silence. The drifter had craned his neck to peer back behind the billboard, at the horizon over the distant cliffs. The stars had faded, and a smudge of hazy blue stained the sky.

"Sun's coming up." The drifter nodded to Boone. "You two are welcome to camp here, if it suits ya. Gets miserable out here in the flats once the sun's in the sky. But I'm sure you know that." He stood, stowing the guitar out of sight behind the billboard. He picked up a bedroll from where he had wedged it against the grate that skirted the billboard's base, and gestured to the rock formation some fifty feet away. "It's safer up there, out of sight. If ya don't mind, put out the fire when you're done with it? Don't need to attract the wrong sort of folks if it can be helped."

Once the drifter had moved up the hill, Vulpes shifted closer to the fire, letting its warmth really soak in. His eyes flicked briefly to Boone, who was still chewing on jerky in the campfire's light.

"It's a defensible position," the spy said. There was a shrug in his voice, even if his shoulders remained stiff. "But can we trust that the dissolute is harmless?"

Boone blinked at him, silently puzzling as he chewed about whether or not Vulpes was really asking for his opinion. Finally, he swallowed and spoke.

"... _I'm_ 'dissolute.' Or did you forget." He quirked the first two fingers of his free hand in loose air quotes. Vulpes didn't respond. He was frowning faintly into the fire. "It's two against one, and he's the idiot that invited strangers to his camp, not the other way around. I think we'll be fine."

"Then let's camp here," Vulpes replied flatly, still staring into the embers.

* * *

Day came and went. They slept through most of it up on the rock formation above the billboard, guarded from the harsh sun until early afternoon, when the heat and light woke them. Vulpes stirred before Boone; he paced the edge of the boulder for a minute, walking a semi-circle just inside the bomb collar's radius. Frustrated, he finally gave Boone a sharp nudge with one toe. The sniper grunted, smacked the offending boot away, and sat blearily upright. Vulpes stared blankly down at him.

"...Can't you just piss off the edge?" he finally groaned, groggy and irritated. He was already sweating, and the accumulated desert grit that chafed with every move did nothing to improve his mood.

Vulpes cocked his head as if considering something, and Boone flung up a hand to interrupt the thought.

"Piss on me and die, asshole. Fuck." He rolled gingerly to his feet, joints cracking and popping. He wasn't so spry anymore. He had no clue how Vulpes managed- he had to be a solid decade older than Boone was. Maybe it was the close combat training. Muscle tone or whatever. Regardless, he envied how fluidly the spy dropped down off the edge of the rock, landing easily on his feet, even with the added weight of the lead-stuffed duffel bag. When Boone followed, he was markedly less graceful. He scowled, remembering Vulpes' repeated calm promises of winning their eventual knife fight once the collars were off. It would probably do him well to keep his sidearm close and start practicing his quick draw...

He sighed, and scuffed one boot through the packed dirt. A glance at the sky suggested it was perhaps three in the afternoon. Remembering the PipBoy, Boone looked down at his wrist to confirm- 2:43pm. The drifter was nowhere to be seen.

"Well," he grumbled, raising his voice enough that it would carry behind him, to where Vulpes was pissing into the dust, "we could stay here until night fall, but I don't see the point. Besides that," he added, shaking his canteen, "I'm low on water. There's an old filling station nearby; I guess we could run the junkies out. But we'll still need to find a place to camp further down the road."

"There's Nelson," Vulpes suggested, drawing up to Boone's side. He kept enough distance between them that, if they were both to reach toward each other, there would be a few inches of buffer between their outstretched hands.

"That's a Legion base," Boone growled, disdain clear in his voice. "We've been over this- I'm not going to any Legion base, and you're not going to any NCR base."

"It's not a base," Vulpes corrected him, slightly testy. "It's an encampment."

"What's the fucking difference."

"Encampments are temporary. Decanus Dead Sea held the camp; a week and a half ago he moved his forces to join Aurelius of Phoenix's garrison in Cottonwood Cove, and they were all rafted upriver to the Fort." Vulpes blinked, and looked sidelong at Boone. "If anyone is left at Nelson, it will just be a skeleton crew."

"You're sure?"

"The Decanus is dead. So is Aurelius. Nelson is hardly a primary concern at the moment."  Boone stared flagrantly at his companion from behind his authority shades. Vulpes seemed collected, but the muscle at his jaw twitched, and his cool eyes flicked uneasily eastward to the broad column of smoke that still rose from the Fort, visible even from that far away.

"You're taking the Legion's decimation well," he remarked glibly, pulling a cigarette from the pack in his pocket, only to irritably shove it back in when he remembered his lack of lighter. Vulpes' mouth curled downward into the slightest scowl, eyes reproachful as he turned them back on the sniper. His jaw stopped twitching, and just _clenched_.

"If Nelson is _disagreeable_ to you," he eventually said, voice still irritatingly even and uninflected, "Novac is the same distance from here." Boone exhaled like he was punched, but Vulpes kept going. "I understand the woman who sold your wife is dead, but there's still the other sniper. Your old _partner_. Manny Vargas?" the spy asked quietly, feigning uncertainty as he bored holes through Boone with his frigid gaze. "And there's that _ranger_ , too. I'm sure they'd be eager to help a fellow soldier. Or maybe not. No, maybe not, if that soldier colluded voluntarily with the man that destroyed the NCR's front line and took New Vegas, and if that soldier comes part and parcel with _me_. I wonder what they'd say to that."

They glowered at each other for a tense second, but then Vulpes was on the move, the duffel bag slung across his back. Boone growled wordlessly under his breath and stalked after him.

"Where the fuck are you going?"

"South," Vulpes replied curtly.

"We're not going to Novac," Boone asserted with some force, and Vulpes actually looked back at him, corner of his mouth pulled up in a sneer. He audibly scoffed in disbelief and disgust before shaking his head and facing forward again, never missing a step. Okay, so he hadn't been serious. In fairness, Boone told himself, it could be hard to tell.

"Or Nelson," the sniper added. Vulpes just shook his head again without looking back. Somehow, Boone got the impression he wasn't conceding.

"Where do you suggest we go, then?" Vulpes asked. "The last time I checked, random uninhabited points in the desert don't have _plumbing_."

"I don't fucking know, okay?!" Boone threw his arms in the air, then immediately pressed his fingers to his temples, head bowed. "How the fuck did the Courier do this shit?" he asked, mostly to himself. "The sick fuck could go wherever he wanted and nobody fucking cared. They licked his fucking _boots_."

"...There's a bunker," Vulpes said suddenly, and he faltered, slowing until he stopped in his tracks.

"...What?"

"There's a bunker. In the hills northeast of Nelson, south of the NCR forward camp." The Frumentarius turned his head slightly. "I followed the Courier there, weeks ago. I had taken it for an abandoned Brotherhood of Steel bunker, but..." He shook his head, this time not out of disdain, but as if to clear away the cobwebs. "It doesn't matter. The bunker is empty, and if the Courier was using it, it will be stocked with supplies."

"I... That sounds fine. To me. You remember where it is?"

"Yes," came Vulpes' distant reply, and he began walking again.

* * *

They didn't talk, when they traveled. There wasn't anything to discuss. So when Vulpes broke the silence as the sun fell behind the cliffs, Boone flinched and instinctively reached for his pistol before he caught himself.

"The Legion wasn't decimated."

Vulpes wasn't looking at him, and Boone, uncertain of what to say, opted to remain silent.

"Decimation means reduction by one tenth. 'Deci,' ten. It's a punishment. Legionaries are lined up. Every tenth man is beaten to death by the other nine."

"...Has it ever happened?"

"Yes," Vulpes said, conspicuously flat. "I was subject to two decimations under the Malpais Legate, before I was Decanus.  Under Lanius..." He shrugged, an inelegant jerk of his shoulder. He paused for a moment, then repeated, "The Legion wasn't decimated. It was... shattered."

 _So were you, fox,_ Boone thought to himself, analyzing the set of the spy's tense shoulders and stiff pace. _And your cracks are showing._


	4. Chapter 4

The bunker was right where Vulpes had said it would be. They'd had to swerve pretty far out of their way to get to it, but they couldn't have found safer or better accommodations if they'd tried.

It had to have been a Brotherhood bunker, once, but not for some time. The Brotherhood wasn't known for their graffiti, and scrawled across the entrance walls were the phrases "Gone to Sierra Madre, " and further along, "I left my heart in Sierra Madre."

"Huh," Boone said, somewhat astounded. Vulpes glanced at him before pressing on. Before the Dam, Gannon had talked about the Sierra Madre, and he really doubted it was the Courier who'd left these messages. Maybe there was a grain of truth in the story. He trailed after Vulpes. "When did you see the Courier here?"

"A few weeks before we first spoke," was Vulpes' quiet reply. He led Boone down some stairs and was wiping dust off some bunks mounted on the wall. There were, Boone noticed, posters on the walls, advertising the Sierra Madre. Maybe the casino really _did_ exist. And the timing fits-  the Courier receives the weird radio signal, comes here to this bunker, vanishes for a few weeks, and appears again looking like he's been to hell and back. It left him with a million questions, but wasn't that always the case with the Courier?

 "The bunker should be secure," said Vulpes as he shoved the duffel under the bunk he'd claimed for his own. "The Legion wasn't aware it existed, and I doubt your NCR knew either."

While Boone continued poking around, Vulpes wearily removed his duster and threw it to the floor. The sniper saw him gingerly pressing fingers against the split and swollen bridge of his nose. It really did look nasty, probably about as nasty as his own split cheek.

Boone looked over the shelf in front of him. It was full of canned foods, and in the back, a few bottles of scotch whiskey. He took a bottle down, and sidled over to the bunks, sitting opposite Vulpes. He held out the scotch.

"For your nose," he said. "I didn't see a sink or anything, but this'll disinfect it."

Vulpes took the bottle and wordlessly set it aside. For a moment Boone was strangely insulted, until the spy leaned forward to snag the footlocker under his bunk with a couple hooked fingers and drag it closer. He fished a clean looking jumpsuit from it (a scribe's uniform?) and tore it into strips. Leaning back again, he pulled the cork off the scotch, soaked a rag, and pressed it to his nose with a wince. Still silent, he took up another scrap of cloth and handed it and the bottle back to Boone, who did the same for his cheek. Their collars blinked at each other in unison under the dim fluorescent light.

"Listen," Boone said after a minute, drawing Vulpes' active attention. "I am... very tired. I really, _really_ don't like you. But until we deal with the Courier, we're stuck together."

Vulpes blinked at him. They'd been through this already.

"Thing is-" he hissed slightly as he pulled the rag away from his cheek and the fabric pulled at his wound, "-thing is, you keep putting me in very tight spots and I don't appreciate it. When this is all over with, do whatever the fuck you want. I'll try to stop you- fuck, I'll probably try to kill you, and I expect you to try and kill me- but we won't have fucking _bomb collars_ on."

He sighed and pulled his legs up on the bunk, tilting his head back against the wall while he looked for the right words.

"Just... can we put it off until then? No more plotting and scheming, no more fighting. Fucking each other up isn't going to help us get rid of the Courier."

Vulpes grimaced and shifted the alcohol soaked rag against his own nose.

"Very well. But if we come into contact with my Frumentarii-"

"Do what you have to do to get rid of them," Boone said shortly. "But no more holding me up at gunpoint or fucking _beheading_ people." Even if it _had_ been a Legionary, it had been a bit gruesome for his tastes. "Just... maybe communicate a little bit. We'll get further working together than against each other."

"...I didn't behead him," Vulpes finally responded, but he didn't argue any other points. He shifted on the bunk and laid back, frowning heavily as he stared at the ceiling and still held the rag to his nose.

Boone was trying to flush the sand out of his wound when Vulpes spoke again.

"What do you know about the Malpais Legate?"

"The what Legate? That big fuck you shot at the Dam?"

"Not Lanius," the fox said, pulling the rag away from his face and looking over to Boone. "Joshua Graham. The Burned Man."

"Oh." Boone exhaled, and took a swig from the bottle he still held. "You covered him in pitch, lit him on fire, and threw him off the Dam. People talk about him like he's a ghost."

"They talk about him like he's alive."

"Is he?"

Vulpes gave an unhelpful half shrug, and looked away.

"When we lost the Dam the first time, it was his fault, and Caesar ordered his death. It was the Praetorian guard that burned him and threw him into the canyon, but I was there. My job is to observe." He paused for a long minute, and Boone almost thought he'd drifted off when he suddenly continued. "The Legate cofounded the Legion. Him, Caesar, and one other. The Legate was a holy man among his people, and the other two were Followers of the Apocalypse." He exhaled sharply, and it almost could have been a laugh. "Healers. Educators." It was the most critically he'd ever heard Vulpes speak about Caesar.

"How the fuck did two Followers and- what, a priest?- wind up making the Legion?"

"Necessity. They were taken captive and trained their captors in warfare in exchange for their lives. Eventually they wound up in charge. Caesar saw the potential to make the wastes safer. He saw the good he brought the tribe that had taken him. But the Legate... all had reason to fear the Legate."

"Were you afraid of him?"

"He personally oversaw my tribe's pacification." Vulpes was decidedly not looking at Boone, and the sniper was surprised he was even telling him any of this. "I was a child when I first witnessed the bloodshed he left in his wake. It wasn't calculated- he was indiscriminate with his violence. There were no ends to justify the means. I am forever indebted to Caesar, but the Legate... nobody mourned his loss when he went over the Dam." Another pause. "It was assumed he died when he went over. It's a long drop. But there were always rumors, and I heard them all in the course of my duties. All except one account. An account related to me only recently."

"The Courier?" Boone hazarded. Vulpes' frown deepened on reflex.

"He told me he had met the Burned Man. He told me he had seen what he'd become after the Legion destroyed him, and that he'd gone on to destroy him again."

"So... he's dead."

"I don't believe he is," Vulpes all but whispered. "The Courier implied not, and the Courier- he is many things, but he is not a liar. I believe the Legate to be alive, but... changed. A new monster, forged by the Courier's hand. Out there somewhere, existing. _Becoming_."

A shudder ran down Boone's spine, and he understood why Vulpes was telling him this.

"And what do you think he plans on turning _us_ into?"

Vulpes didn't answer for a moment, but then-

"My concern is what he thinks it will take."

* * *

They awoke to Boone's PipBoy alarm, and after a quick meal of bunker food, they covered up their collars with the scraps of scribe uniforms and set off once more.

The going was easy. In the aftermath of the battle at the Dam, it seemed the entire Mojave had gone quiet. Maybe for the long term, with a new stalemate in place, or maybe just temporarily while all sides regrouped and made new plans. Regardless, the desert seemed more desolate to Boone than it ever had before. In the two days it took to travel to Nipton, following roads and cutting across swaths of cracked red earth, they only saw geckos and scorpions.

Truthfully- it made them both jumpy. Vulpes was quiet, as if making up for their conversation in the bunker, but on constant high alert. Every little noise or flicker of movement had him ducking instinctively into a half crouch as they moved, looking for threats. Boone was hardly any better. He kept his rifle in hand; as heavy and unwieldy as it was, he felt more comfortable having it at the ready should they spot danger on the horizon.

And yet, no danger appeared. It only fueled their suspicions.

They rested in a cave off the road during the peak of the day, alternately dozing and keeping watch. If nothing else, they were growing more used to each other. They no longer jerked awake every time the other moved. But neither slept easy- they were both familiar with this cave, and though the Courier had cleared it out months before, it had once been home to night stalkers and giant rats. If they had moved back in since then they showed neither hide nor hair of themselves, but the unlikely pair didn't let their guards down.

The second day, they arrived at Nipton in the early afternoon. The plan, as they agreed on it, was to steal in, resupply, rest through the hottest hours in an abandoned house, and move on. As Boone understood it, they were about halfway to the Divide, and he was eager to finish the journey. Still, as they neared the town, Vulpes grew warier, moved slower. His eyes darted over the distant rooftops, looking for smoke from campfires and seeing none. It didn't set him at ease. He kept his eyes locked on the buildings, watching for the telltale glint of sunshine on a scope.

"You're sure the Legion's moved on?" Boone asked for the umpteenth time.

"We were never formally camped there in the first place," Vulpes replied mechanically, as he had every time before. The town was clearly visible about a mile off in the faint dusty haze, but it was impossible to tell from this distance if it was inhabited. A lack of smoke was no proof of abandonment. "My contubernium was a... temporary installation. When I left, they left with me. There's no reason to expect a Legion presence." He said nothing of _other_ presences, but the wary uncertainty was implicit in his tone.

Within another twenty minutes, they came to the first buildings on the edge of town, and Boone got his first eyeful of what Nipton had become.

He hadn't been here in years. The Courier had never brought him this way; his last memories of Nipton involved poker, a great deal of cheap liquor, and just as much puking into the scrubby bushes outside the city hall. He'd heard the rumors and reports of what had happened since, but...

He wasn't expecting the _bodies_.

In the desert, undisturbed corpses don't decay so much as they desiccate. The salted earth wicks the moisture right out before bacteria and scavenging wildlife can get at the flesh, leaving skin shrunk and taut like parchment, lips peeled away from teeth and paper-thin eyelids stretched sleepily across empty eye sockets.

The first mummy lied on the street and caught his immediate attention. Its coveralls were covered with near-black stains at the shoulders and a section of its head was blown off, but it still had skin and flesh like jerky, and sun-bleached hair that fluttered in the breeze. Gruesome, but he'd seen similar in the years he'd spent here, in the shadow of New Vegas. Honestly, it wasn't much worse than looking at the average ghoul.

"Your work?" Boone asked, nudging the body with a foot and grimacing when it shifted as one stiff object, like a paper mache sculpture.

"No, the Courier's," Vulpes replied flatly, walking past without sparing the body a glance. " _This_ is mine."

Boone looked up and was hit by an instant wave of revulsion as he realized for the first time what he was looking at. Originally, he had taken them for telephone poles, but now he saw- the main street was lined with crosses, and a twisted, shrunken body hung from each. What he had thought were heaps of rubble were piles of soot blackened _bone_ , countless bodies stacked and burned in unceremonious pyres. It had been a year at least since the lottery, and the scene still sat undisturbed, all the horrific details preserved by the elements.

His collar beeped. Vulpes hadn't waited for him, hugging the house walls behind a row of crucifixes  without even glancing at the dead. Swallowing his horror in the face of a more immediate danger, he stepped over the mummy with the head wound and jogged to catch up with the Frumentarius.

"What. The _fuck,_ " Boone breathed, nausea catching him by surprise as he glanced sideways and caught sight of the agony and terror forever frozen on the shriveled face of a crucified victim. But Vulpes flung out an arm, one hand catching him in the chest in an unusual act of intentional contact, and pulled him back.

 _Movement_ _ahead_ , the handsigns he flashed said, and Boone was once again both grateful and irritated that the NCR's and the Legion's signs were so similar. _Take cover_.

They both flattened against the wall, and Vulpes edged sideways to peer surreptitiously around the corner. Boone absentmindedly wiped the essence of spy off his shirt where Vulpes had touched, gaze drifting once more to the lines of dead.

Vulpes leaned back against the wall again, chin tucked defensively down into his bomb collar, as if it would lend any protection from a potential attack rather than just exploding at the first hard knock.

"Powder Gangers," he murmured. "I assume they left the crucified in place to ward off interlopers."

"What the fuck," Boone repeated. Vulpes peeked around the corner again.

"There are three of them outside one of the houses. It's impossible to know how many more are inside. I saw two proximity mines."

"There'll be more than two," Boone breathed. He looked back at the crosses again. "Jesus fucking Christ, what the hell is wrong with you, really? I can kind of understand the loyalty, but what. The. Fuck."

"How many would you see die in this war?" Vulpes dared a third glance around the corner. "I send a message with the lives of a few hundred whores, thieves, and murderers to preserve the lives of thousands. It's an easy exchange. Would you prefer these dregs of your society lived, at the expense of the innocent? Surely this is better than something like the massacre of unarmed women and children? Something I know you have experience in." He looked balefully over at Boone. "They aren't moving. We should leave before we're noticed."

"Fucking- _move_." Boone pushed past Vulpes who uttered a low warning growl, and pulling off his beret, he looked around the corner himself. Two Powder Gangers in prison blues were sitting in lawn chairs at the front door of a dilapidated ranch house. A third was seated on the edge of the shallow roof, legs dangling over the ledge to kick idly in air. True to the spy's word, two mines blinked in the dirt just off the street, far enough away from the Powder Gangers that they might get hit with spattered blood and giblets, but not significant shrapnel.

When he drew back behind cover again, he noticed Vulpes' expression. Beneath the bitter, stony deadpan was a hint of _troubled_.

"What."

"One of those Powder Gangers is a Legionary," he replied in low tones, calm and matter-of-fact.  His eyebrows twitched downward, inward, and returned to neutral.

"A deserter," Boone offered, but Vulpes shook his head, not so much in disagreement as puzzlement.

"One of the others was NCR. A ranger. It seems unlikely they would work together, deserters or not." This said bitterly, a reflection on their own working relationship.

"How do you-" Boone started, but cut himself off by taking another look, really absorbing every detail.

"The one on the roof. Recently shaved head, tan lines show he had a mohawk- common enough among shock troops. He's mouthing a marching song. Kicking his feet to the tune."

"Which one's NCR?"

"The one sitting to the right of the door. I recognize him."

And now that Vulpes said it, Boone recognized him too- he'd seen him before, at one outpost or another. He couldn't quite remember which, though, and it niggled at him.

"What about the other guy?" None of the three supposed Powder Gangers were talking or moving; the one on the left sat low in his chair, legs kicked leisurely out in front of him and arms folded behind his head. It was impossible to know if his eyes were open or closed behind the sunglasses he wore, but the way he was rhythmically bouncing one foot suggested he was awake. Nothing about him screamed NCR, but nothing about him really screamed anything, besides the Correctional Facility getup.

"I don't know. I don't think he's a Legionary."

Boone withdrew from the corner and leaned against the worn siding a foot away from the Frumentarius.

"I don't know what's happening here, but I don't like it." He looked sidelong at Vulpes. "We should fucking leave this hellhole."

In silent agreement, Vulpes started back up the street, now moving more carefully, closer to the ground. Boone was his shadow, a step aside and behind as they paused behind cover, searching for any more supposed Powder Gangers.

They reached the end of the crucified, stepped over the mummy with its brains blown out, and they were back in the desert. They would be fine; Primm wasn't too far off and they still had-

A crack of gunfire, and a bullet whizzed past into the desert floor, throwing up dust and clods of dried earth.

"Sniper!" Boone barked. Immediately, his frame of mind shifted. One glance back at the city, and he knew the only sensible place for a sniper to set up would be the roof of city hall. It was the highest point around, short of the low mountains that lingered behind Nipton, and even the highest point of the roof was shallow enough to sprawl out with a rifle.

Moving on instinct, he seized Vulpes by his bicep and wrenched him back, back towards Nipton and cover. If they tried to run further into the desert, they would be sitting ducks. A good marksman would be able to pick one of them off long before they got out of range. Better to get back to the buildings, where the sniper would have a much harder time tracking them.

Another shot squeezed off, and this one plunged into the dirt barely a yard ahead of Vulpes.

"It's a team," Vulpes called to Boone as they both sprinted toward cover. "Two of them, on the roof of city hall."

Fuck. Where did the Powder Gangers get a trained sniper team? More NCR? As far as he knew, the Legion didn't keep snipers- or, at least, no _specialized_ snipers, and certainly no teams. It was obvious that Vulpes, at least, had some skill with a rifle, if the shot he landed in Lanius' skull was any evidence. But he'd taken that shot alone, with no spotter.

"Give me your cigarettes," Vulpes demanded suddenly as they ran, urgently holding an open hand toward Boone, who was too busy dashing toward the building closest the road to pay him too much attention. He could hear whistling over his ragged breath and the pounding of their feet- the piercing kind of whistle people make with two fingers in their mouths, hugely loud and soaring. One whistle, starting low and ending at a high shriek, and then a response from elsewhere in the town-

"Cigarettes!" Vulpes repeated, all urgency, and on reflex Boone pulled the half empty pack from his pocket and slapped it into the spy's waiting palm. He had no idea what he was planning, but it didn't seem likely that the fox had suddenly decided to take up a nicotine habit, so there had to be good reason.

They made it back among the outlying buildings, and together they began weaving an erratic path through weeds and rubble. All the way, Vulpes alternated between searching for enemies, fiddling with the cigarettes, and strangely, looking in every mailbox they passed. When he turned up an old magazine in one of them, he focused more intently on the cigarettes, back pressed against a heap of scorched bones that provided surprisingly good camouflage behind his dark armor and pale skin. Boone was crouched in a crop of tall grass, beret still shoved in his belt so the bright color wouldn't give them away. There was a proper racket of whistles echoing down the streets, calls and answers as at least a dozen people searched the area for them.

When Vulpes stood to tuck a lit cigarette with a filter wrapped in shredded paper between the feet of a crucified mummy, he suddenly understood what the plan was. Half the cigarette was broken away; in a couple minutes, what was left of the cigarette would burn back and ignite the paper, setting the whole cross ablaze. And Vulpes had at least four more cigarette bundles in his hand as he motioned _follow me_ at Boone and began to slink to a new hiding place through the narrow gap between two ramshackle houses.

Lighting a fire was a distraction. Lighting many fires was an _excellent_ distraction, and all the smoke would make the snipers' jobs hell. Still, it would only give them partial cover from the sniper team on the roof. If there was a way to redirect their attention entirely instead of just distract them...

There was the sudden sound of footsteps, a group approaching at a gallop, and the pair flung themselves under a partially collapsed porch roof in time to see a handful of men and women, all in Powder Ganger getup, rush past.

Still under the caved roof, Boone crept up alongside Vulpes and grabbed the duffel bag the Frumentarius was still toting. Vulpes spared him only a glance before searching for movement and lighting another incendiary device. He crawled out of the rubble to place it near a pile of broken planks in a patch of tall, bone dry grass next to the house. The cigarette on this one was shorter- he was setting it up so they would light up out of order and obscure their path. Clever.

They moved again, and just in time- he could see a plume of smoke rising over the first fire Vulpes had set, and the sound of shouting as their enemies arrived on scene. As they rushed, breath bated, to another hiding spot, Boone fished the half empty bottle of scotch they had used for disinfectant from the bag, along with the scavenged NCR uniform. He tore a sleeve off, and ripped that lengthwise into strips with his hands and teeth. The fabric tasted sour, like sweat and dust. Quickly, he wrapped two strips together, wet them with the scotch, and stuffed one end of the twined fabric down the mouth of the bottle.

Vulpes nudged him with a toe and flicked a hand in the air near his head, indicating they needed to move. The shouting was getting louder again. Boone raised his Molotov cocktail to draw Vulpes' attention to it and jerked his head at the city hall. They could see it where they were crouched behind the shell of an automobile, the building's front doors hanging open like a gaping maw to reveal a perfectly dark interior. Vulpes understood immediately.

They spoke through their shared hand signs, and their rough-spun plan was set in motion. They circled back towards the edge of the town, and Vulpes set the shortest cigarette yet alight and tossed the bundle into a trailer littered with old papers, wrappers, mattresses, and refuse. Some rustling pages caught fire immediately, and the pair turned on their heels and ran towards the town center. Soon enough, they were crossing the uncomfortably open expanse in front of city hall.

 _Crack_ , and an echo, and a searing pain in Boone's shoulder as a bullet tore through armor and nicked muscle and skin, leaving a burnt trench in the solid curve of his trapezius. More whistles, and these originated from the roof of the city hall. Staccato bursts, sharp and pressing.

In response, Vulpes just lit up the rest of the magazine he had been using as kindling and flung it into an overgrown, sun-baked yard even as he passed the lighter to Boone. As the flames licked at the dry grass, quickly blossoming, Boone held the lighter's flame to the Molotov cocktail's wick before hurling the bottle towards the open doors of city hall.

His aim was good; the bottle arced through the doorway, tumbling mouth over foot, before landing with a crash and a flare of red light inside.

The fire spread quick through the bone dry timbers, as it did everywhere else. In the eight seconds it took for the pair to turn again and bolt behind a house, the entrance became filled with flame. In the fifteen seconds following, while they flung themselves down into the weeds as a handful of blue-clad men rushed past to answer the alarm whistle, the fire had found the wallpaper and was aggressively filling the ground floor with an angry inferno and billowing gray smoke.

Another seventeen seconds of held breath in their hiding place, and there were two thudding explosions on the second floor of the building as the flames found something volatile. Some of the shouts had turned to screams.

"Let's go," Boone prompted, bursting upright, and running straight into the enemy.

There was only a moment's pause as they stared at each other in shock before the man was on him. He and Boone were roughly similar in size and build, but Boone found himself grossly outmatched. They struggled, and Boone got a few solid punches in, but then he was wrested into a half-Nelson and a knife swung up to his throat-

Vulpes’ weight plowed into them, toppling all three into the dust. There was a momentary tussle as their attacker's boot caught Vulpes in the jaw, knocking him away, but it left him open to a few swift punches to the face from the sniper. The man's head fell back and he groaned, and then Vulpes was there, pushing Boone aside to plant a boot on the man's chest and hold his machete to his throat.

"Ave, Picus," he growled. The man on the ground looked at Vulpes with wide eyes, but then past him.

"Put down the knife!" barked a woman. Boone spun, pistol drawn, to see three more people. Two were men, the third a woman. All wore the blue jackets of the NCR prison. One of the men, he noted, was the Legionary deserter he and Vulpes had seen what felt like hours, but was only minutes, earlier.

To his credit, Vulpes didn't move a muscle. The man under him squirmed slightly.

"Vulpes," Picus acknowledged. "This is awkward." His words sounded strangely distant, as if this moment was as surreal for him as it was for Boone, who had _no fucking clue_ what was happening. His only consolation was that the spymaster seemed to be just as lost, a faint hint of confusion evident under his flat affect. "I never planned on seeing _you_ again. This is... unexpected."

"Drop your weapons," the woman repeated sternly, holding her own pistol up, aimed at Boone. The two men held back. The ex-Legionary was particularly twitchy, anxiously shifting from one foot to the other a solid ten feet behind the woman with the gun. Boone and Vulpes ignored them.

"Report," Vulpes said quietly, something vicious lurking under his practiced calm. At this, Picus coughed a laugh.

"I will never report anything to you again." And louder: "Shoot them! They'll kill me no matter what."

The woman lifted her gun a hair, preparing to fire. Without thinking, Boone pulled his gun back, and pressed the muzzle to his bomb collar.

"I wouldn't," he warned, and everyone froze. "You recognize this? One shot, and boom. You're all dead."

Vulpes continued to ignore what was happening behind him, instead taking the opportunity to press a knee deeper into Picus' stomach, restricting his breathing.

"Where's Lucius?"

"If I knew, I would never tell you," Picus wheezed. Then, rapidfire Latin, Vulpes' voice low and growling and Picus stuttering and gasping underneath, voices overlapping, and Vulpes seized one of Picus' fingers and _wrenched_ it back. The snapping of bone and cartilage wasn't audible, but Picus' choked scream _was_ , and Vulpes was _manic,_ dead words in a dead tongue flying from his mouth too low to make out-

"Fuck Caesar," Picus spat suddenly, using the soft C, "and _fuck you_." And it froze Vulpes mid-sentence, all heat draining away and leaving only frigid, professional ice behind. With an efficient swipe of his hand, he cut deep into Picus' throat, drawing a gush of blood. He rolled to his feet before his armor could be stained, leaving Picus twitching and gurgling in the dust. Boone still stood with his gun to his collar, his heart in his throat. Neither party moved. If Boone tried to put some ground between them, they'd shoot him as soon as they cleared the blast radius. If they moved, there was every chance that one or both of the interlopers would use the opportunity to shoot _them_.

The moment broke into chaos when there was another massive explosion from city hall and the clock tower collapsed into the building, letting angry orange flame burst up into the sky as though from a furnace. The woman and the man at her heels instinctively jerked their heads at the sound, and Boone turned the gun back onto them, squeezing two rounds into the woman's chest, and another three into the man. Both dropped, dead or dying. The Legion deserter had wisely deserted once again- he was nowhere to be seen.

"We need to leave, _now,_ " Boone breathed. Vulpes didn't argue.

Together they fled into the desert, leaving the inferno behind.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've built several Spotify playlists for this story. You can listen to the first one, focused on the Courier, below. :)

They were still running. Their hurried sprint had long since slowed to a long-striding jog, but it had been something like forty minutes and Boone was struggling.

"Slow... down..." he called between breaths. This wasn't the first time he'd tried to stop the spy, but it was the first time he listened- after a moment, Vulpes' jog slowed to a walk, and then a stop. He stood blank faced, staring out at the hazy nothing, as Boone stumbled to a halt next to him, panting.

Boone stooped over in a half-crouch, hands braced on his knees. He squeezed his eyes shut and focused on his breathing. Vulpes might have the better part of a decade on him, but he was also used to brutal long-distance treks across the desert. He was breathing heavily, but managing well. Boone, not so much. He was plenty fit, but not for this level of bullshit.

And it _was_ bullshit. All of it was bullshit.

Struck with a sudden spark of rage, he flung the duffel bag he still carried several feet away with a growl and viciously kicked a stone hard enough to send it flying. Vulpes didn't react except to turn his head slightly, tracking the stone's skipping and skittering across the packed earth.

"I need to know," Boone said, squeezing his eyes shut for a long second before opening them and staring at the spy, "what the fuck that was. I just killed two people and I need to know why."

Vulpes didn't respond. That vague look of shell shock was back; it had lurked just under the surface since the Dam but now it held the reigns again. His brow was slightly furrowed as he stared at the kicked rock. It had stopped moving and was resting once again amongst its countless brethren on the red clay.

"Hey."

Nothing.

" _Hey._ "

The Frumentarius started slightly, glanced briefly in his general direction, and then studiously looked the other way.

"I don't know what is happening," he admitted, very quietly.

"Who is Lucius."

Vulpes did look at him then, eyes still hollow and cold over his battered and blackened nose.

"Lucius is the commander of the Praetorian guard. With Caesar and Lanius dead, he is next in the line of succession. Provided he still lives. But he vanished in the battle, and I can't..."

"And who was that guy you...?" Boone drew a finger across his throat, miming Picus' execution.

Vulpes face twitched violently.

"Picus was a mole, a Frumentarius chosen specially for his task and sent ahead of the vanguard to join the New California Republic's army. Until very recently, he was a high ranking officer at Camp McCarran, working to support the Legion from inside the NCR's ranks. Now he's just dead."

"I noticed," Boone said, diligently not thinking too hard about how deeply the Legion had infiltrated the NCR's ranks.

"He betrayed the Legion," Vulpes muttered, his gaze wandering again. "But he's protecting Lucius."

"Were they friends?" And this nearly got the fox to laugh. Boone hated how his features twisted, carefully maintained neutrality giving way to crazed bitterness for a split second. Being bomb collar buddies with a calm, if troubled, Vulpes Inculta was preferable by far to a manic and enraged "Pile Body Upon Body" Vulpes Inculta.

"The Frumentarii do not have _friends_. Ours is a crucial position, but a thankless one. Lucius may not actively disdain us as Lanius did, but he has no love for us." He exhaled heavily and clenched his jaw. "...I was still a Decanus when Picus was sent West, and only saw him twice since I became a Frumentarius. I cannot speak to his character or connections. And yet, only the most loyal would be chosen for such a mission."

"Ah."

The sun was beginning to set, casting an odd pinkish hue over everything. Still they stood there.

"...I don't know what is happening," the spy murmured. His mouth twitched and he contemplated the ever present mirage in the distance. "I missed something, I don't..."

"Okay," said Boone. "Well."

"...what did I _miss_..."

"We're not too far from Primm. And you said the Divide is just there, right?"

Vulpes didn't reply. Boone consulted his PipBoy (he had grown used to the extra weight on his arm, but he kept forgetting it was _there_ ) and pulled up the map of the Mojave that had been programmed into it. If the GPS was accurate, they could reach the Divide that night, but without a chance to restock and rest in Nipton...

"Okay," he started again. "We're gonna' go to Primm. We're gonna' get some sleep. And then we're gonna' go after the Courier."

"No." There was steel in his voice. The Frumentarius was back. "No. We go straight for the throat. We're going to the Divide."

* * *

There was no arguing with him, really. Not with the bomb collars and his dangerous lack of self-preservation. And things could be worse- Boone took a moment to paw through the duffel bag as they walked through the growing dim and saw they had enough water and rations to last a few days. He wasn't sure how much they really could have extended that if they _had_ gone to Primm.

Instead, they went straight to the canyon mouth that was the gateway to the Divide. One minute, Vulpes was leading him up a cracked and winding road, past flipped trailers and empty Pre-War playgrounds, and the next, they were standing before a wall of twisted steel marked by a head on a stake.

The flesh was all but gone, but it still had hair- thick dreadlocks that bounced and rattled against the pole the head was mounted on. A flagpole, Boone realized with a start, when he saw the golden eagle that had once capped it lying below in the dirt. He could practically see the Courier's hand in this. It was just his flavor of fucked up.

"Who the fuck is this."

"A Frumentarius named Ulysses." Vulpes was distracted, running his hand over painted graffiti on the heaped wreckage. White paint flaked off under his fingers. _You can go home, Courier_.

"So that graffiti-"

"It was left by Ulysses for the Courier."

"This Ulysses guy was your spy in Ashton?" Boone took Vulpes' silence as confirmation. Suddenly, pieces began falling rapidly into place. "You said a courier took a package to Ashton, and that's why it blew..."

Vulpes let his hand fall away from the graffiti and began picking scraps of wood out of the wreckage, presumably to build a fire. Boone frowned hard as he began to understand.

"You think that courier was _the_ Courier."

The spy crouched down near a sizable boulder, and began building a steepled cone of kindling on the bare ground.

"Before the Dam, after he got back from wherever the fuck he went- he told me he was looking for a Legion spy." _A courier. Like me... and not like me._ "I didn't believe him."

"He had been looking for Ulysses for over a year. He first came to me in Nipton, and asked about him then. Whether he had some memory of him, or whether Ulysses had reached out, I don't know." He frowned at there being more information he hadn't managed to gather. Boone could actually _see_ how it irritated him, to be so late to the game. Like a vulture descending on carrion to find only bones. "But Ulysses knew about the Courier and about the Divide. I suspect he was the first to put two and two together. Why he cared..." The fox shook his head, uncomprehending. "He deserted after the missiles detonated."

"Lots of that going around," Boone muttered under his breath, raising his eyebrows at the skull before joining Vulpes. "Any of my cigarettes left?"

Vulpes wordlessly passed him the crumpled card-stock box. There were still a handful left, along with one lonely, broken-off half. This he pitched in among the stacked firewood before taking Vulpes' lighter from his pocket and lighting up a smoke. After a heavy drag on the cigarette, he tossed the lighter back to Vulpes.

"Yours."

The Frumentarius caught the lighter, and a minute later had a tidy little fire crackling away behind their boulder. Boone probed at the graze wound on his shoulder and decided it didn't really need attention.

Well after the sun had fully set and the fire had died down to a quieter burn, Vulpes turned his head where he sat against the stone to look at Boone.

"I don't know the way from here," he said. Boone just shrugged dismissively, too tired to care.

"Neither do I."

* * *

As it turned out, they didn't need to know the way. There was only _one_ way, and that way was _in_ \- deeper and deeper into the hellish tangle of stone and steel. They walked and climbed and crawled in relative silence for the better part of three days, and every step took them into harsher winds, darker skies. The path was eerily quiet apart from the howling of the wind; now and then they heard the groan of shifting debris or an echoing clatter as rocks fell behind them. Every time, Vulpes would freeze in place, head turned and peering over his shoulder. Nothing living ever made itself known, and after a moment Vulpes would unstick and continue walking.

They were running low on rations when they finally cleared a narrow pass in the canyon and found themselves standing precariously on the sharp edge of a cliff, overlooking the desolate ruins of a town half-buried in dirt and sand. Ashton.

The winds up on the cliff were uncomfortable, buffeting around the folds in their clothes and threatening to whisk Boone's shades off his head completely. Every gust brought with it a fine dusting of sand that stung against his exposed skin. The sniper thought back to the Courier's skin when he'd reappeared from the ether, raw and red, and then looked down again at the shifting winds on the town below. A perpetual sandstorm, evidently strong enough to peel flesh off, albeit slowly. He wished he had his assault armor. Long sleeves and high collar to keep out sand, kevlar to keep out bullets...

His collar beeped a warning, and he jolted to attention. Vulpes had followed a side trail along the cliff face, barely noticeable through the sand and the rubble. Boone hurried to catch up, but the beeping stopped after only a couple steps. Vulpes must have stopped when the alarm started, but left it to Boone to close the gap. Urging him onward, then. He couldn't blame him. They both wanted this over with, and honestly, Vulpes' growing reticence was becoming a point of concern for Boone.

He climbed up the narrow path, holding onto his rifle strap with one hand and steadying himself on the rock face with the other as Vulpes led, some ten feet in front. They rounded a tight corner, and there, embedded in the wall, was a heavy metal door.

Wordlessly, they passed through the door, knowing that the Courier could be anywhere, waiting for them. But what was waiting for them wasn't the Courier. Instead, a modified eyebot was hovering in the center of the first room they stepped into, ominously backlit by the cold, flickering lights and blue sparks dripping from severed cables that dangled from the ceiling. At the sight of them, the eyebot beeped and whirred its excitement, zipping closer to hover happily around their heads, like a friendly dog welcoming guests. But then it shuddered, and moved back a few inches. It tilted minutely forward, and cocked slightly to the side. If it were organic, Boone would say it was drunk, or maybe dazed.

" _Hello, Craig. Ave, Vulpes._ "

The voice crackled from the eyebot's speakers, and Boone took a step back as Vulpes took a step forward, their hands twitching toward weapons. The eyebot slowly sank about an inch, then rolled back up, giving the impression of an upturned nose... or perhaps a throat exposed, not out of deference, but condescending arrogance.

" _...This isn't a recording,_ " the Courier said when neither man spoke. " _I'm really here._ You're _really here. I was worried."_ He didn't sound worried. _"You took so long, so long, and we_ are _on a schedule. Time and tide_ ," the Courier continued, and the change in his voice suggested that this was a quote that Gannon would have recognized but was lost on Boone, " _wait for no man. And there isn't much time left, I'm afraid. The situation is... degrading. Quickly."_ There was a smug whimsy to his voice, as if he was pondering something both amusing and bizarre. Boone was suddenly struck with the desire to punch the eyebot.

"Take these collars off us," Boone growled, and the Courier laughed with delight that quickly soured into something much nastier.

" _Inconvenient, aren't they? I wore one myself not too long ago- or, one like them. Yours are slightly altered. Be grateful for that, or your heads would be red slush right now. But no. No. No! The collars stay on. Did you think your journey was over when you got here? No. You need to come find me. Come to me, to where the sleeping giants wait. Then the collars can come off._ "

"You swear it?" Vulpes asked, grim. It was the first time he'd spoken since the night before.

" _I swear it._ " Boone could hear the Courier's poisoned smile and yellowed teeth through the crackle of the speakers. " _But don't look so worried. I'll be traveling with you, in a way. We will walk this lonesome road together._ "

"Fuck you," Boone breathed, shaking his head minutely. But there wasn't really anything he could do- he could destroy the eyebot, sure, but that wouldn't improve their odds of surviving this.

With a careful exhale, Boone forced his anger to subside, and walked past the eyebot and deeper into the room. At the far wall there was a control panel, and beyond that, a large grimy window. And past the window...

"Shit," he whispered. The flag of the old world stared back at him from beyond the glass, painted neatly on the side of a colossal nuclear missile. He quickly took a step away from the control panel, holding his hands up in the air to be sure he didn't touch anything. The missile slept for now, but the Courier had told him before that _sleep_ was all it was, that they could be woken, _detonated_...

He was faintly aware of Vulpes pausing a few feet away to look at the missile, but he was there only a moment before turning away to rummage through the old crates and gear left on the shelves. When Boone finally forced his eyes away from the world killer, he saw Vulpes holding out a respirator and a pair of goggles that he guessed once belonged with a riot helmet while he still dug through a box with the other hand. Both items dangled from Vulpes' fingers by their straps; he noticed with some unease that Vulpes' hand was shaking, making the headgear bounce and bob in the air. Disconcerted by the sight, Boone grabbed them, and the fox let his hand drop. He looked up from the box, face blank, and wordlessly donned his own goggles and breathing mask. Well, he was quiet, Boone thought as he pulled his goggles over his head, but at least he was still thinking. If the sandstorm was as bad as it looked, this would at least keep the grit  out of their eyes and airways.

The eyebot hovered silently behind them as, together, they moved through the silo, circling the great missile- still pristine after all these centuries, still waiting for its chance to destroy- and moving down through narrow hallways, ducking steam pipes and gauges that protruded from the walls and ceiling. They passed several destroyed security robots, which didn't alarm him so much. Robots succumb to wear and tear all the time, and trapped in this missile silo with no maintenance crew, it was bound to happen.

Then they passed corpses, alarmingly _fresh_ corpses, and he was instantly on edge. They were horrifying to look at; their skin was flayed off, baring ropy red muscle tissue and gore to the open air. Sand was matted into raw wounds, and pearly scar tissue ran across their bodies like veins of silver in a mine.

They smelled them before they saw them, and they heard the thick swarms of flies that congregated on them before they'd even gotten all the way down the hallway and into the room. One body was in a crumpled heap along the wall, ropes of decayed flesh dangling from some protruding rebar and black juices staining the wall and floor in a rank gelatinous puddle. The other body lied spread-eagle across an overturned locker, its flesh peeling away from bone under the force of gravity. Everywhere, maggots crawled, and the flies were thick in the air. Boone coughed, buried his mouth in the crook of his elbow, and followed Vulpes' example in putting on his respirator.

"They have been dead two or three weeks," Vulpes' voice came, filtered through his mask. Boone couldn't tell if he was guessing, or if he was so intimately familiar with corpses that he could pinpoint a time of death at a glance. Not that it would surprise him. Not with the atrocities at Nipton so fresh in his mind.

"They were ghouls," Boone said, prodding at the spread-eagle body's armor with one boot, "but their armor is weird. And their skin..." He glanced back at the eyebot that lurked behind, but the Courier stayed silent. Maybe he wouldn't _really_ be ever-present. Boone couldn't decide if this was comforting or worrying.

The Frumentarius looked disdainfully down at the corpses another few seconds, but then stepped over them, leading the way down the next hall.

After several more dark passages sprayed with cryptic messages to the Courier, they came to a final door, heavy and imposing. It opened with a bang and a groan when Vulpes pulled the handle, and they were immediately blasted by a mist of sand. The PipBoy crackled, giving voice to the radiation on the wind. The sand pelted painfully against Boone's bare arms, and once again he lamented his lack of appropriate clothing. Vulpes was better off in his stolen duster, and if the sand bothered the eyebot, it made no indication.

Vulpes stepped out into the orange glow of the Divide, and Boone hesitantly followed. How long, he wondered, before his own skin was flayed away?

Not long, he thought to himself as he stepped out of the building and another gust of wind drove a blast of sand into his side, stinging his arm.

They had emerged in what looked like a ruined army base- the wreckage and remains of the barracks and administration buildings surrounding the missile silo that had been partially built into the stone itself. Everywhere he looked, there were high chain link fences topped with coils of razor wire, overturned cargo trucks, and the pancaked corpses of civilian vehicles.

Boone focused on the rounded roof of a barracks not too far away. It would probably have uniforms inside, left over by soldiers long since dead. Maybe even rations- they were running very low. He stepped past Vulpes, scanning for trouble. He frowned at a glow in the orange haze, in the heart of a destroyed building that looked to have been repurposed into a small fort. Fire.

He pointed, and the spy looked out toward the fire, his own expression hidden behind his mask.

"You are a sniper," he finally said, slowly turning his head to look at Boone. " _Snipe._ "

Boone scowled, but shrugged the rifle off his shoulder and lifted it to peer down the scope towards the fire. Lots of jagged debris and flickering shadows, but he couldn't even see the flames, let alone anyone gathered around them.

"There's nothing _to_ 'snipe,'" he grumbled, lowering his rifle. Vulpes made a dismissive sound, but Boone noticed he had his own rifle in hand and at the ready.

Slowly and without speaking, they descended from the silo's stoop into the ruined street below, shifting from cover to cover, deeper into the Divide. The wind shrieked and howled as it tore past the cliffs, bringing thick curtains of sand with it. The bare skin of Boone's arms was worn pink, and they'd been out for less than ten minutes. He lightly elbowed Vulpes, and jerked his head toward the barracks before leading the way there, squeezing between two lengths of fencing and clambering as quietly as he could over the hood of the car that had hit the fence and made the gap. The eyebot swept silently above the fence as Vulpes slipped through the gap with a glance over his shoulder.

There was an open stretch of about ten yards that the pair hurriedly crossed, and then they were at the door of the barracks. The door was metal; maybe steel, maybe aluminum. Boone swung his rifle back over his shoulder and drew his sidearm, listening carefully for movement from within. Then, he pushed the door open.

He barely had time to swear and fling himself into the dust outside before the gunfire started.


	6. Chapter 6

A ghoul, violent red and baring its teeth, burst out of the barracks with its machine gun blazing, raining its deadly hail wildly into dirt and vehicles.

_Tat, rat-tat, rat-tat._

Another gun from somewhere behind joined in, and bullets crashed into the corrugated steel face of the barracks and into the dirt. Boone rolled and scrambled to his feet, unloading half a clip into the ghoul before it could turn on him. When the ghoul and its gun dropped, he flung himself behind the corner of the building and hoped Vulpes had found cover, hoped he hadn't gone too far away or -

_Rat-tat, rat-tat, rat-tat._

Three more bursts from the unseen enemy, and he heard a few hit metal. The gunfire seemed to be coming from across the street behind them. Boone edged forward and peeked around the corner.

 _Rat-tat_.

There- muzzle flare, and he could see a few dark shapes descending rapidly from the makeshift fortress with the unseen fire. Gritting his teeth, Boone shoved his sidearm back into its holster, dropped to one knee, and lifted up his rifle. Before he could line up a shot,

_POP-POP-POP, POP-POP-POP, POP-POP-POP._

Vulpes, it had to be. The shots were loud. Very close by.

He tuned out the noise and peered down the scope of his rifle, slowing his breathing as he trained it on one of the incoming shapes.

 ** _CRACK_**.

He fired one round, and the shape he had fired on staggered and fell back, but still stood. He ejected the casing and immediately readied himself for a second shot, aware that the gunfire was multiplying and growing louder. Behind it, he thought he heard distant sporadic fire from what he thought might be a pistol, but he couldn't be sure if it was part of this volley, or echoes from another skirmish elsewhere in the gorge.

 _POP-POP-POP- **CRACK** -POP-POPboom-POP, POPboomboom-POP-POP_.

He fired on the same figure, and this time it fell motionless in the dust. Through the scope, though, he could still see two more of the ghouls approaching. He swung his crosshairs over center mass of the nearer target, exhaled, and squeezed the trigger.

**_CRACK_ ** **.**

The shot went slightly wide, hitting the ghoul in the right arm. It roared its rage as the rough blade it carried fell from a hand whose muscles and tendons had been rent by the bullet. Then,

_Pop-pop-pop_

and two bursts of red from its chest, and then its head disintegrated. Two more ghouls still approached. One held a sword made of scrap, and the other had a rifle raised. It fired again, and Boone ducked back behind the corner to relative safety, rifle held upright and head poked out only enough to glimpse the action with one eye.

_Rat-tat, rat-POP-POP-POP._

The ghoul with the gun fell forward, but was scrambling on the ground, trying to find his footing-

 _Biting_ pain tore through Boone's shoulder, worryingly low, and he wheezed a grunt of surprise and agony as he slipped forward into the dirt from the blow. Choking and coughing for his next breath, he flipped onto his back, kicking desperately to shove himself away, away from whatever was attacking him. Gunshots filled the air, and his ears rang with them, and he could feel and hear the blood pressing painfully at his eardrums.

One particularly loud gunshot, and another searing pain in his gut, less painful than the first but more dangerous by far. It felt as though all the muscle in his abdomen cramped agonizingly around the bullet and quickly numbed. He suddenly felt very hot, and sweat poured off him, brought on by pain rather than heat.

 _I'm going into shock_ , Boone realized dimly, dropping the rifle he still had in a white knuckled grip and reaching with shaky hand for his sidearm. A ghoul moved to stand over him, and he raised his gun just as the ghoul raised its, but Boone was faster. Chunks of skull and brain rained onto the earth, and the body collapsed partially onto him, making him gasp with pain.

And then, a wave of nausea overcame him, and his vision went black.

* * *

He came to choking on vomit. Weak and shaking violently, he struggled to roll to his side under the dead weight of the ghoul, coughing up bile and fighting for breath. He could feel stomach acid burning in his nose. Snot streamed from his nostrils; spit dripped from his mouth in ropes with every coughing wheeze. And the pain never went away.

The gunfire, now so close and loud that each shot sent a piercing bolt of white hot pain coursing through his head, eventually dwindled and died. Even in the ringing silence, though, his ears still felt like they were about to burst, and there was a thick knot of nausea sitting at the base of his skull. He faintly registered the sickening wet sound of metal hacking through flesh as he coughed and snorted and spat out sour bile into his mask, which didn't help. He pawed briefly at the mask but then clumsily grabbed his collar, not quite present enough to worry about it but instinctively hyperaware that it was _there_. As he groped at the warm collar, smearing blood over steel and skin,  he heard unsteady footsteps coming towards him, toes catching and dragging in the dust. They stopped just behind him, and then hands hooked under his armpits and pulled, ignoring his cries of pain as he slid out from under the ghoul corpse and backwards through the dirt.

He felt two horrifically painful jabs in his back as he was hauled bodily up the steps to the barracks door, and then through. Immediately the wind let up, and it was a small blessing.  It felt like a hole the size of his head had been blasted through his abdomen, and it hurt to breath and move his left arm. He stared dazed at the ceiling, wheezing. He heard but didn't hear the door get slammed and locked, and hasty limping footsteps as somebody crossed the barracks and began moving things around, hissing and swearing unintelligibly between sharp, agonized breaths.

He closed his eyes for a moment. They shot open when his shirt was cut away and a burning liquid was poured over his stomach, setting his injury on fire. Something dry tugged and pulled at the ragged flesh, drawing a delirious groan from him. A hand slid under his side, probing his tender back before withdrawing. Then, suddenly, a sharp and stabbing pain compounding what he already felt, something poking and pulling down in his guts. He struggled weakly, jerking away from the intrusion, but a leg swung past his face and a knee lightly pressed into his chest. Most of the weight was on the toe of the foot curled around his good shoulder. Cool, damp fabric and tacky leather brushed his cheek. It stank of blood. The stabbing continued, and there was some dark muttering between heavy breaths. A moment later, a needle jabbed into the tender flesh around his gut wound, and the leg and pressure on his chest vanished, though a hand quickly replaced the knee, firmly but gently holding his shaking body steady as the process was repeated at his shoulder. This time, probing behind the wound led to jolting pain, and rather than the subsequent digging, he was rolled partially onto his good side and more burning liquid applied at his back before another needle was jabbed into him. He tried to focus on what was happening, after, but there was a weird empty feeling behind his forehead and the room was tilting and spinning around him. He let his eyelids fall shut again.

And this time, they stayed shut for a while.

* * *

When he finally came to- _really_ came to, conscious and alert- his first thought was to touch his bomb collar and make sure he wasn't actually a headless corpse. His second action was to let his hand slide down over his chest and stomach to probe at the bandages that had appeared there. He felt like he'd been trampled by a Bighorner and he was in the middle of the worst headache of his life, but it didn't feel like he was dying, and wasn't that something?

He cracked his eyes open, and took in his surroundings. His mask, he noticed, had been removed, along with his goggles. He could taste vomit in his mouth. Had he vomited? When had he vomited?

He groaned a sigh and turned his head to the side. Vulpes sat curled in on himself a few feet away, arms crossed over knees pulled to his chest, ankles crossed below. He had taken off a lot of his armor; he was down to a sleeveless undershirt on top, his leathers, mask, and goggles heaped on top of his duster at his side. One boot was off, his pant leg pulled up to bare a fresh bandage wrapped from a few inches above his ankle to just below his knee. More bandages covered his shoulder and upper arm, along with one narrow band on his forearm. His hands were stained dark with blood up past his wrists, with more scattered smears further up his arms and on his face and shirt. The blood was almost black against his too-pale skin.

Vulpes barely spared him an unreadable glance before focusing his attention once again on something along the opposite wall, the muscle at his temple rhythmically clenching. Boone winced as he leaned on his elbow, propping himself up enough to see the eyebot silently hovering there. With another groan, he let himself back down, only to realize he was lying in a sticky pool of blood. When he lifted his arm again to wipe it from his cheek, he noticed a bandage on his arm to mirror Vulpes'. Hand shaking, he pulled the edge back to see an angry red puncture mark, and the faint beginnings of a bruise. He looked to Vulpes again.

"...Did you do a blood transfusion? How did-" his dry throat caught on itself, and he coughed before trying again. "How did you know my blood type?" His skin suddenly crawled as he considered that his blood was Vulpes'. That his lifeblood was _Legion_. The overwhelming urge hit him to cut open an artery and bleed the dirty blood until he was pure and dry, but it was gone as quick as it came.

Vulpes studiously ignored him, recrossing his arms so the bandaged one was on bottom, hidden from sight. Not fast enough, though, that Boone didn't register the small cluster of pock-mark like scars beside the bandage.

"You've done this before." Then, "You didn't know my blood type. You're a universal donor." And after yet another pause, Boone narrowed his eyes. "How the hell would a Legionary know their blood type? Or how to do a blood transfusion? Didn't think the Legion did that sort of thing."

" _They don't_ ," the Courier's filtered voice piped in unexpectedly, low and sinuous. " _But Vulpes was not born to the Legion._ " Vulpes' eyes locked onto the eyebot, but he otherwise didn't react. His jaw muscles stopped twitching and just _tightened_ , and even Boone could hear his teeth grinding.

"I bet Caesar just fucking loved that," Boone grumbled, closing his eyes. He didn't feel quite ready to get up yet. Everything hurt too much, and he was tired. He had to have lost a lot of blood if Vulpes had resorted to giving his, especially when he had his own injuries. "His pet dog using scary modern medicine to help people." It sounded fake when he said it. Vulpes and healing just didn't fit together, conceptually.

"My tribe's ways died with my tribe," Vulpes murmured in response, surprising him. "I did not give blood after I was brought into the fold. I obeyed the law, as all Legionaries do."

"...How old were you when the Legion conquered your tribe?" He heard Vulpes shift, and imagined the scowl hidden behind his mask of composure. "You had more than one scar from this, but you would have been just a kid."

"Which part of it disturbs you- that I was once young, or that I may have saved lives?" Vulpes' voice was sharp and bitter, and somehow _self-righteous_. Fuck, he actually thought he was a _good_ guy.

"You don't save lives."

"I do not save lives your Republic cares about. They are still lives." There was a poignant pause. “I saved _your_ life.”

"You're a fucking _monster_ ," Boone spat, getting heated. "You've destroyed entire tribes, entire _towns_ to make a fucking _point._ "

"And you claim to be better?" More shifting, and Boone opened his eyes again because _shit_ , there was suddenly something dangerous in his tone. Vulpes stood up, his weight on his good leg. "You, who massacred the helpless masses at Bitter Springs? You, who _murdered your own wife and child?_ Yes, the moral superiority of you and your Republic is _clear._ " His voice had dropped to a menacing growl, and he took a silent step closer, favoring his injured leg but apparently still mobile enough to murder an injured man in a fit of rage, collars be damned. One finger was raised, pointing damningly- the arm that was bandaged at the shoulder- and it did not shake. Maybe not injured badly enough to put them on equal footing in a hand-to-hand fight. Fuck. Fuck. Boone heaved himself up into a sitting position (his gut _burned and cramped_ and his shoulder stabbed with every movement) and slowly began shoving himself away from Vulpes with hand and foot as the spy took another step towards him. He felt for his pistol, his knife, but couldn't find either, and then his back was to the wall between two bunks.

"Don't talk to me about Carla," Boone snarled, searching frantically for something, _anything_ he could use to protect himself and coming up empty. "Don't _talk_ about my wife." Vulpes scoffed. His eyes were hungry and hollow.

" _You_ are the one who killed her. Not me."

"It was a merciful death," he couldn't help replying, though, veins burning with fiery anger. "Better death than slavery. It was _your_ people-"

"The _Legion_ does not _kill_ its slaves. If you had not killed her," Vulpes interrupted, "there is every possibility that you would have been reunited with your wife and child after the Battle at the Dam. You murdered your family and have the gall to suggest _I_ am the evil one." Boone recoiled, sick to his stomach. Vulpes was shaking, but from anger or weakness, it was impossible to say. How much blood had Vulpes lost, between his wounds and the transfusion? Quietly, almost to himself, Vulpes added, "I did not kill my family. I would have _died_ to save them. From where I stand, the evil one is _you_."

The fight seemed to go out of him; tense shoulders dropped slightly, and he turned his head to face a blank stretch of wall between bunks. He looked lost, standing there. Boone still sat frozen, his stomach lurching from a combination of adrenaline and burgeoning horror as he considered that what Vulpes had said might be true. That, had he not shot Carla, she might have spent a hideous year as a slave, but been liberated. That their child would be only a few months old now, and would not remember the Legion.

A pained whine escaped him as he tilted his head back and banged it into the wall with some force, and pounded the heels of his palms against his forehead. Vulpes sank heavily to the floor again, where he picked absently at the edge of the bandages on his leg. An arc of red was beginning to seep up to the surface. Boone breathed into his hands for a minute, and closing the door on his emotions, he looked up at Vulpes again.

"Will you be able to walk."

Vulpes gave a small, lopsided shrug. The ghost of a wince flashed across his face.

"I'll have to." He scratched congealed blood off one hand with his fingernails. "I used both Stimpaks on your injuries."

"...Thanks." He was only being half sarcastic.

Vulpes frowned. "You would have died otherwise. In saving your life, I save my own. Do not think I hold any _fondness_ for you."

"Still." Boone winced and slid to the nearest bunk to rummage through the footlocker there. His clothes were clammy with blood, and sticking uncomfortably to his skin, and his shirt had been more or less destroyed between the bullets and first aid. He was pleased to find some old but intact riot armor, complete with a faded brown duster. He stripped off the shredded remains of his shirt and mopped at the worst blood stains left on his skin with it, working through the distracting bone-deep ache the Stimpaks left behind. They stimulated healing, but the new cells were tired and weak from growing and dividing so quickly. It was better than bleeding out, but they didn't exactly _undo_ the damage. He had been shot on his right side, too, and that complicated things- the recoil of his rifle could tear the wound right back open again if he didn't give his body some time to properly set the newly healed tissues.

He groaned. His _rifle_.

"Please tell me you brought my rifle in."

Vulpes gestured vaguely towards the door, and Boone's relief was palpable when he recognized the gun, dumped unceremoniously with the duffel bag of ammo and rations beside the trail of blood his body had painted across the floor. Holy shit, he'd bled a lot. Maybe a blood transfusion really wasn't overkill- and, he mused with some measure of bitterness, even if Vulpes had saved nobody else in his lifetime, he _had_ saved Boone. But Boone was just one scar among many in the fox's flesh.

"Hey. Vulpes. Can I ask you something?"

Vulpes looked sidelong at the eyebot, hovering silently again, but he didn't say no, so Boone just went ahead, staring at the blood stained scraps of fabric in his hands.

"You lost your family. Were they in the Fort?" He could still hear Vulpes' howls of rage at the sight of smoke over the cliffs, and in retrospect, it haunted him, imagining it was his wife and child on that pyre and not a despot.

"Why does it matter?" was Vulpes' quiet response. "If they died last week, or many years ago? They are gone."

"I'm not trying to pick a fight or anything," Boone sighed, too exhausted by his injuries and Vulpes' latest episode of rage to really press the issue. "I'm just- I was just trying to understand. I don't know. My head fucking hurts when I try to follow all the mental gymnastics you do."

"There is nothing to _understand_. Before the Legion I was nothing. When I was recruited, I trained and I served. _True to Caesar_. It is that simple." He added in a mutter, "You profligates always try to ascribe a tragic past to those you disagree with, as though the only way you can conceive of a moral man committing what you call immoral acts is if he is _broken_ , rather than simply accepting your own ignorance and limited imagination."

Boone sighed, and grimaced, then grabbed hold of the bunk. Wincing, he pulled himself upright; his joints protested, and his semi-healed wounds protested more. It took him a minute after standing to find the strength and balance to shuffle across the barracks to the open duffel bag. Vulpes was sitting with his back to him, fidgeting at the edge of his leg bandages and paying him no attention. The eyebot, however, turned in place to silently watch his progress. He could hear the lenses whirring and clicking as it focused its sight on him.

He reached the duffel bag, and suppressing a groan and clutching a hand to his abdomen, he bent and grabbed its strap. Slowly, he returned to the bunks, and sank down onto one, exhaling heavily. He pulled the bag into his lap and, shoving aside clips and boxes of ammunition, began taking stock of their remaining rations.

"Bad news," Boone said, once he'd checked and rechecked. "We have enough food for maybe two days on partial rations. Water, less than that, and who knows if anything we find here is drinkable."

"...I won't be able to travel until tomorrow at the earliest." The admission seemed to pain him. Or maybe it was his leg that pained him. Both of his hands were pressed gingerly against the bandages as if the pressure was all that was holding his leg together. WIth all the blood caked on Vulpes' hands, it was hard to tell if his leg was bleeding through their wrappings or not.

"Yeah, me neither." He dropped the bundled jerky back into the duffel and zipped it. "Fuck."

A restless day or so spent in the barracks, and they would be down to one hungry day of rations, and out of water entirely. And, of course, they'd both still be in considerably worse shape than before, slower moving and much more vulnerable to attack.

"Courier," Boone  said suddenly, craning to look at the eyebot over his shoulder. "How far away are we from whatever it is we're supposed to be going?"

For a moment, he wasn't sure the Courier was going to respond, but then the eyebot twisted strangely and its speakers crackled to life.

" _A ways_ ," the Courier half crooned, half growled.

"How _long_ will it take us?"

" _That depends entirely on you, Craig_." A hum of contemplation. " _And Vulpes, of course. Perhaps_ ," the Courier's voice continued, dark and thoughtful, " _more Vulpes than you, all things considered. Your_ leg _, Vulpes-_ " The wet sound of tongue over teeth. "- _did not look good._ "

Vulpes kept his back pointedly turned to the eyebot. Boone just frowned, searching for the right combination of words to pry some answers from the Courier. Vulpes wasn't wrong; the Courier wasn't forthcoming, but he wasn't a liar either, and if Boone asked the right question he just might get the answer he was looking for.

"Will it take us longer than a day to get there, if we go _straight_ there?" he tried.

" _Very likely_." The Courier was grinning into his microphone, each breath audible. A shudder ran down Boone's spine. He masked it, shifting the duffel to the floor and lying back on the old bunk. Springs creaked under him.

"So we're definitely going to run out of food."

But they'd both known that, of course. It had taken them three days from the canyon wreckage to come this far; even if they turned back now, they wouldn't have enough supplies to see them back. But, Boone mused darkly... perhaps they had both accepted that this was likely to be a one way trip. Certainly Vulpes had nothing outside this canyon to return to but chaos and confusion, with Caesar dead, Lucius missing, and the Legion crumbling. And Boone... well. He needed to see this through. Nothing else really mattered.

"Why the fuck are we even here?" Boone groaned, digging the pads of his thumbs up against his brow at the inside corners of his eyes. To his surprise, the Courier audibly exhaled, thinking, and then responded.

" _I can remember some of it, you know. What life was before I was shot, before the Divide became what you see. Not all of it, just snatches and insinuations. I remember how unmoored I felt, like something in me was broken and hollow. I thought if I could only fix what was broken, I would find_ happiness _. I was a weak creature. Pathetic. Utterly_ human _. I'm better now_ ," he added. " _I've become_ better _. That's why you're here."_

"As witnesses?"

" _No._ No. _You have a transformation of your own to go through, and I can't think of a more transformative place for it_." A brief pause. " _I_ am _helping you_. _You don't realize it now, but you will. You'll learn. You'll see."_

In the silence that followed, Boone closed his eyes, sucked in a deep breath, and slowly released it, willing his body to relax. The quicker he healed, the sooner they could move on, and the sooner they could be out of here.

He tossed and he turned but he slept.

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys, I have a family member in the hospital right now. Normally I give each chapter a final proof read and edit but I haven't had time. I'll probably go back some time this week and give it the once over, but in the meantime, please forgive any oddities, typos, and uncharacteristic clunkiness. Thank you!

Vulpes was up when he eventually awoke, some indeterminable time later. Boone heard the quiet shift of fabric as he moved, and occasional metallic clinks. When he opened his eyes, brushing away the sandy crust with raw fingers, he saw the spy crouched over the pool of blood Boone had once occupied, picking up various medical tools, pausing to inspect them (filthy and blackened with both their shed blood, plastic tubing and forceps and crusty balled up gauze) before dropping them into the old Pre-War medical kit they had presumably come from.

With only the dusty electric ceiling fixtures for light, it was impossible to know the time without the benefit of the PipBoy. Boone checked it as he carefully pushed himself back to lean upright against the wall. His shoulder felt stiff and sore, but didn't hurt too much as he lifted his arm. It was late morning.

"How's your leg."

Vulpes stiffened, but then he closed the kit, picked it up, and stood. Boone didn't miss how he favored his injured leg as he walked to the work bench on the back wall of the barracks and dropped the kit on the battered wooden surface.

"...Serviceable. _Barely_ ," he growled bitterly. "But we cannot sit here forever." He looked back at Boone, appraising; it was hard to tell how much of the blotchy purple-black under his eyes was from lack of sleep, and how much was from his broken nose. Boone wondered if he'd slept at all. "Your injuries are healing?"

"Healed," he said, probing delicately at his shoulder and stomach. They ached, but it was the ache of overtaxed muscles and tissues, not that of lingering damage. "Even that graze I took in Nipton is gone." There was a narrow band of scar tissue arcing over his shoulder, but nothing else.

" _Gaudete_ ," Vulpes grumbled, finding his way to a bunk across the barracks and easing himself carefully down onto the mattress. He reached down beside the bunk for his canteen, and after considering it wistfully, he undid the cap and took a drink. "We will run out of water by the end of the day."

There were several minutes of quiet, not uncomfortable. They could hear every gust of wind, the metal roof singing as it was pelted by sand. Apparently the storm never stopped. Boone fished a piece of jerky from their rations and gnawed at it. He had no appetite to speak of, but his body needed the calories.

"I think," he said eventually, "we should stay here as long as we can. We're going to have to risk the tap water eventually whether we like it or not, and even if you can walk on it-" and he could _barely_ do that, "-I don't think you'll be able to _run_ on that leg." He noticed the eyebot twitch in the air and tried not to think about it. Tried not to look for some meaning in the trivial motion.

To his surprise, Vulpes didn't argue it. Instead, he laid down sideways across his bunk, feet still on the floor, staring at the spring frame of the one above. _Too easy._ Boone's eyebrows twitched inward.

"How bad is it, exactly?"

The spy turned his head but otherwise didn't move.

"It is... less than ideal."

Boone's scowl deepened with his suspicion.

"'Less than ideal' meaning 'this scrape is inconvenient,' or 'less than ideal' meaning 'my leg is about to drop off?'"

"I suspect I am lucky to be walking," Vulpes eventually admitted, frowning himself. "The healing powder dulls the pain and promotes healing, and I've stitched it to the best of my ability, but..." He trailed off, turning his face skyward again to contemplate the stained mattress above.

Boone sighed, and dragged a hand down his face, pressing his fingers into one eye before scrubbing his temple. It wasn't like there was anything he could actually _do_ in this situation. They had no more Stimpaks, and Vulpes was likely better at first aid than he was.

" _Naught to do but wait_ ," he heard breathed, but he couldn't be sure it came from the eyebot or the fox.

* * *

"How do Legion soldiers kill time?"

Both men were lying flat across their bunks. Vulpes' good foot twitched restlessly with pent up energy, and Boone found himself impatiently checking the PipBoy every few minutes, watching time crawl.

"'Kill time?'" Vulpes echoed, sounding mildly mystified, but he must have picked up the idiom's meaning because he then said "Drills. Camp duties. Athletic contests." A pause. "If you are trying to find a way to 'kill time,' I don't believe the situation is suitable any of the usual Legion activities... but I do have a pack of cards." There was a rustling noise, and Boone propped himself up enough to see Vulpes holding a battered pack up, the cards bound together with twine.

"Huh." He swung his legs off the bed and rolled his shoulders. "Isn't gambling against your rules?"

"I'm a Frumentarius," Vulpes reminded him dryly, moving from his cot to a clean patch of floor, settling with his leg carefully outstretched. Boone sat down across from him. "We are expected to fit in with the New Vegas crowd." His mouth twitched. " _Were_ expected."

"What are we playing?" Boone asked as Vulpes untied the twine and began neatly shuffling. "Texas Hold'em?"

Vulpes looked up from the cards, face unreadable.

"I was thinking Whist."

* * *

They ran out of water several hours later, long after they had gotten bored with Whist, switched to some more obscure game Boone hadn't heard of and had difficulty understanding, and quickly abandoned in favor of Go Fish. Less thinking involved.

"Fours," Boone said, lying flat on the rough floor, hand held about three inches above his face. Vulpes was quiet. Boone turned his cards aside and peered diagonally at him. He was scowling at his canteen. When he set it down, it clunked hollowly. The countdown until they had to leave had really begun, then.

Vulpes handed him a card, tucked between first and middle fingers, and Boone set down the full suit at his shoulder.

"Twos," he said.

"Go fish."

* * *

They slept again, and the constant static of the sandstorm outside was punctuated with occasional bursts of gunfire in the distance. Boone could hear Vulpes freeze every time, body still and silent across the barracks as they both listened.

At the unmistakable boom of a high caliber handgun, Vulpes shifted on his bunk and let out the shaky breath he'd been holding.

* * *

They were both awake when morning came, uneasy with leaving but unable (and unwilling) to stay. They each ate a strip of jerky, and put the few remaining pieces back in the duffel bag.

While Boone refilled their canteens at the rust stained basin at the back of the barracks, sniffing cautiously at the water as he did, Vulpes carefully picked the bandages away from his leg, peeling back one blood-stained layer after another until it was cloth pulling at raw flesh. He hissed audibly and slowed, easing the crusted bandage away from stitching and scabs.

Boone balked as he brought Vulpes' canteen back to him, his stomach lurching. It was an ugly, ugly wound, and if he'd realized how bad it really was, he might have been more worried sooner. A great bloody arc had been torn into his leg, as though a machete had skimmed down past the outside of his knee and peeled back a swath of flesh to bare bone. Vulpes had sewn the flap back up, but the tissue all around the wound was swollen and smeared with dry blood.

Vulpes took the canteen Boone offered and seemed to consider washing the blood away, but instead he just poured healing powder from a pouch he carried over the wound and began replacing the wrapping, binding from knee to ankle and immobilizing the joint. When that was done, he poured some more healing powder directly into his mouth and chased it down with a swig from his canteen. He grimaced.

"It tastes like metal."

"Well, I don't think it's radioactive, so there's that." Boone picked up their duffel bag, and slung his rifle over his other shoulder. Vulpes carefully stood, testing his bound leg. Slowly, he shifted all his weight to it, then eased off again, apparently satisfied. When he took up his own rifle and moved towards the door, he barely limped. Boone wondered how much he was downplaying the pain and severity of his injury. But then, he had no clue how much the healing powder actually helped, or its effects on the body. He held out an arm, blocking Vulpes.

"That healing powder, it's not going to mess with your mind any?"

At that, Vulpes openly scowled.

"If it did, the Legion would not allow it." He stepped around Boone's arm and, pulling his mask up over his mouth, put a hand on the door lock. "My mind is clear."

Boone put on his own mask and goggles, drew his pistol, and leaned against the wall beside the door, ready. He nodded at Vulpes who stood behind the cover of the door. They listened for a moment, and then Vulpes pulled the lock and turned the knob. They paused again, but when they didn't hear any movement, Vulpes slowly opened the door. Boone peered through the gap, gun turned down but at the ready.

"Nothing."

Vulpes let the door swing open the rest of the way, and they stepped back out into the storm, the eyebot hovering silently in their wake. With his new riot gear, the sand was more a nuisance than a pain, painting everything in Boone's vision orange without the burning sting against his bare skin.

Boone hesitated when Vulpes stiffened, instantly alert.

"Where," Vulpes said quietly, barely audible over the wind, "are the bodies."

Fuck.

Boone looked around, but the ghouls they had killed in the skirmish were gone without a trace. Even the bloodstains in the dirt were gone, erased by the shifting sands.

"Are you sure-"

"They _were_ dead."

And, yeah. The fight was a blur but he distinctly remembered two taking headshots. Even ghouls don't get back up after that. So that meant the bodies had been removed- maybe scavengers, maybe compatriots. He wasn't sure which was worse; that there might be more of the strange ghouls lurking nearby waiting for them to emerge, or that there were animals in the gorge big and stealthy enough to carry off a corpse without being heard. He shook his head minutely at Vulpes, who was scanning the jagged silhouettes of demolished buildings in the haze with nervous suspicion. After a moment, Vulpes also shook his head and began walking.

Vulpes took point, leading them warily up the street. It was still early, and though light enough to see, the sun hadn't crested the canyon walls and the hellscape they navigated was still drenched in heavy shadow.

The Courier had once said to Boone that traveling through Legion territory was like a vacation, knowing that there was no dangerous wildlife or raiders to worry about. If this was where the Courier had come from, he supposed he could understand the sentiment. He was on edge, almost frantic as he watched for movement, clutching his rifle in a white-knuckle grip. And yet, they encountered nothing larger than a runty radroach, and the conspicuous absence of their enemies did nothing to ease Boone's nerves. Growing anxious, he raised his left arm to fiddle with the PipBoy's radio, searching for a signal, _any_ signal that might indicate habitation in this hellhole.

" _No point in that, Craig,_ " the Courier's voice crackled over the eyebot's speakers. " _Canyon walls like these, and that cloud- there's no signals getting in or out. We're sitting in one big, empty echo chamber._ " A gurgle of manic laughter. " _Not to be confused with the Big Empty proper._ "

He tried anyway, twisting the knobs to pan across frequencies and only picking up static.

" _It's a strange thing_ ," the Courier went on, " _how the radios only play certain songs. Big Iron, Johnny Guitar, Blue Moon... All popular when the bombs fell, but there are recordings of music from before then, and there's been new music since. I've heard them- songs that were centuries old when Big Iron was just getting penned. New songs, too. But the world is stuck. They only play those same old Pre-War songs. Like listening to the echoes from the exact moment the world fried. Shadows of men scorched onto city walls by nuclear fire. Mankind doesn't know how to move on._ "

Boone grimaced, but let his arm drop to his side, and the only sound from the PipBoy were the bursts of clicks from the Geiger counter with every gust of wind.

It only took an hour or so for Vulpes to start flagging. First he fell back to Boone's side, limp more pronounced, and eventually he was sucking in breath through clenched teeth as he staggered along, trying to keep up. They had covered a good deal of ground, and Boone was impressed he'd made it this far. Even in obvious pain, Vulpes pressed on.

He would have kept pressing on, too, if Boone hadn't physically forced him to stop, grabbing his shoulder and anchoring him in place. That earned him a dirty look, somehow more disdainful for being hidden behind headgear.

"You need a break," Boone said, glancing around them before pulling Vulpes behind a stack of ruined cars, hidden from most angles behind the twisted steel. Vulpes pulled his mask down to take a swig from his canteen, still scowling at the water's bad taste. He shot a dark look at Boone.

"We can't stop," he insisted quietly, twisting his head to look around them as though making sure nobody was eavesdropping. He scowled at the eyebot and his mouth snapped shut with a click of teeth.

"You can't keep _going_ , and-"

"No," Vulpes said, cutting him off. He pulled his goggles down around his neck with his mask to let Boone see the hard set of his face, the real worry in his eyes. "We're-" He snarled his frustration and shuddered slightly. He eyed the robot again. Then, more calmly but still very urgent, very firm: " _We cannot afford to stop._ "

Boone looked between the silent eyebot and Vulpes. He was missing something.

"The bodies that vanished..." he started, probing, but Vulpes just shook his head and turned away, all but hopping to avoid further aggravating his leg. Boone sighed heavily, and mopped muddy sweat from his brow. "We haven't seen any more of those ghouls lately. Let's at least take a half hour break. I won't be able to shoot _and_ carry you."

Vulpes grumbled something, but he also awkwardly sat down on the ground behind the cover of the car, sullenly pulling his goggles back up over his face. Boone dug through the duffel bag and fished out the last of their food. He split it in half, shoved one portion in his mouth, and held out the other to Vulpes as a peace offering. The Frumentarius begrudgingly took it.

"We will need to find more food," Vulpes said after a minute spent picking and peeling fibers away from a hunk of jerky, slowly eroding it. "There will be..." he hesitated, frowning distastefully. "There will likely be more of _them_ in the ruins."

Boone grunted. One thing at a time.

* * *

After barely fifteen minutes, Vulpes was eager to move on. It was quiet enough that Boone gave in a little easier than he might have otherwise- the calm was tense and uneasy, like sunny skies when you can see a wall of thunder and sand approaching on the horizon. He was sure, any moment now, the gunfire would start. He itched for higher ground and better cover.

Vulpes seemed marginally surer on his feet as they scrambled up an incline of shattered asphalt, the eyebot drifting lazily behind them, but that may have been the healing powder he'd choked down with his rations, grimacing at its bitterness.

At a flash of motion in his peripheral, though, Vulpes moved like an uninjured man, dropping back behind some debris as he swung up his gun.

"Deathclaw!" Boone glanced around for a good place to hunker down with his rifle and coming up empty. He swore under his breath; the deathclaw was still some distance away, wandering half-masked by the sand just beyond a patch of wreckage and rubble, but he _knew_ them by now, and if the wind turned the wrong way, it would be on them in seconds. And, he thought ruefully as he flung himself behind a dented guard rail on the side of the ruined road they had been walking, it would take better cover than this to put them out of its massive reach.

He raised his rifle, peering down the scope. He'd only get one shot, maybe two, before the deathclaw would figure out where they were, and if he was lucky, another couple shots before it impaled him on those foot long daggers it had for claws. And it wasn't as though this would be an easy shot. The wind was strong, and he had no clue how the sand would affect the trajectory. He also knew that it would take as much luck as it would skill to bring a beast as big as this down with two or three shots, even if he got it in the head. Its skull was thick, and heavily armored with tough skin and scales and great horny growths. A bullet, to the head or otherwise, was more likely to piss it off than to slow it down.

And then, through the scope, he saw a second deathclaw slip out from behind a building, shadowing the first. It was, if possible, even larger than its mate. Its mottled brown-gray skin was striped and spotted with pale scars from past battles.

Boone tore himself away from his scope and looked over at Vulpes, who was crouched with his shoulder pressed against the heaped sand and stone, rifle ready as he peered warily over the top of his cover.

"There are two," Boone said, quick and low. "We can't take them."

Vulpes' eyes darted from the dark blurry shapes in the sand to the low buildings around them.

"They can't follow us into a building," he suggested. "Unless they tear the walls apart."

"I don't like it," the sniper replied slowly, eying the buildings himself. "Probably more ghouls in there, hiding from the deathclaws. We'd be out of the frying pan and into the fire."

Vulpes gave a frustrated _well, what do you want from me_ shrug.

"We can't stay here. I don't see another option."

Boone grimaced as he continued staring at the ruins. They could try to skirt the deathclaws, but he wasn't sure there was an open path they could take that would give them a wide enough berth. Not with cliffs on one side and mountains of vehicles, stone, and razor wire on the other. And even if Vulpes' leg weren't wounded, they would never be able to outrun deathclaws this size. They'd be overtaken in seconds.

He looked down his scope again. The deathclaws were raking the earth near where he and Vulpes had first spotted them; maybe they had found something edible half-buried in the shifting dust, or maybe they could smell human blood on the air but couldn't quite get a pin on it yet.

Slowly, he panned to the sides, magnifying empty doorway and windows, black in the lingering shade of the morning. They wouldn't be able to outrun a deathclaw, but even if they were seen, they would be able to get to the nearest building in time. As strong as the beasts were, he doubted they could tear through poured concrete and cinderblocks as easily as they could rend through flesh.

"Move from building to building, cover to cover," Boone murmured, looking down his scope again to inspect the architecture around them. "We don't really have a choice. Let's do it. The building at two o' clock, open window."

He slung his rifle over his back. Vulpes did the same, edging around his cover to give him a clear path. Boone watched the deathclaws, waiting; they were little more than moving blocks of color, but he could see when they'd both turned away and took the opportunity to bolt for the window. Vulpes was his shadow as he passed through the haze, low to the ground and moving quickly, but not running, not making any sound that could be heard over the shifting sand. The hair on his neck stood on end as they moved into open ground, uneasy even with the partial cover the sandstorm offered. The ghouls here, the beasts- they lived every day in these conditions. They were used to operating in them. He and Vulpes were not.

There was the sound of scuffed dirt and a brief, sharp inhale, and Boone looked back to see Vulpes on the ground, struggling to get back up on his feet. Without a thought, he doubled back and hauled Vulpes up, bracing him with his left hand and pulling Vulpes's right arm over his neck with the other. A glance up and his blood turned to ice in his veins.

Both deathclaws had turned, eerily quiet as they raised their blunt snouts, flicking out purple forked tongues to taste the air. The nearer of the two ducked its head, displaying its great recurved horns. And then, stretching its bladelike claws in a deadly fan, it took a step forward.

They had seen. They were coming.

Vulpes muttered something in breathless, pained Latin as the deathclaws grew larger and darker in their approach. Their footfalls shook the earth. Boone's heart hammered in his chest, and he launched forward in near panic, dragging the Frumentarius along with him.

There was a screeching roar behind them, breaking the uncanny quiet and sending a fresh burst of adrenaline coursing through his arteries. The animals _felt_ close, he could almost feel their hot breath on his back and their claws in his skin, but the window was close too, and then he was flinging himself through it, pulling Vulpes over the sill with him. The Courier's eyebot hovered in behind them, then vanished deeper into the building. The beast bellowed again, and the other rumbled a growl in tandem, and this time Vulpes grabbed Boone and began scrambling down the black hallway away from the window, dragging the sniper with him across the floor.

A heavy head, huge and hideous, appeared in the empty window, and the deathclaw stretched a lanky arm through. Its claws raked at the floor behind them, and it shrieked at them, trying to force its head and torso through the frame. Its horns caught on the edges, and it roared again in frustration. Its talons dragged against plaster and linoleum as it tried to force through, and then the second deathclaw was there, blocking out the rest of the light and adding to its mate's enraged destruction.

Boone pried Vulpes' clawed hand off his shoulder and stood on shaky legs. He grabbed Vulpes by the arm and helped him up, eyes fixed on the deathclaws. Their milky yellow eyes twitched and rolled as tooth and claw tore chunks from the architecture and filled the air with sand and dust. They _saw_ them, and not in the mechanical way of dumb predators, that cause-and-effect cascade of behavior, but like thinking beasts, observing and calculating. Vulpes was pulling Boone's sleeve again, breathing heavily as he tried to move him further away from the beasts.

The larger deathclaw suddenly stopped and withdrew its clawing arm, letting its daggered hand sit on the sill. The other deathclaw followed suit, removing itself from the window entirely to linger just outside, pressed flank to flank with its partner. The remaining deathclaw took in a huge, heavy breath, let it out. A fat purple tongue pressed past its snaggle teeth. Its bulbous eye rested on Boone, and for the first time, he wondered how smart they really were. A knot of dread settled in his stomach under his general terror as the deathclaw silently extracted its head from the window. Giving up? Or looking for a better access point?

"Keep moving," he realized Vulpes was urging him, hissing through clenched teeth. Boone blinked and turned to him; his face was ashen, sand clinging to his sweat. That wasn't just fear, that was _pain_. He glanced down, but it was impossible to tell if his wound had reopened.

Vulpes hobbled down the hall and through a door, hugging the wall for something to brace himself against, his other hand wrapped tight around the hilt of his machete. Boone drew his sidearm and followed him, shaking. The eyebot emerged from the shadows and slipped ahead of him.

Just ahead, they found another empty room with a busted out window. Ancient glass littered the vinyl floor beneath it, mixed in with orange sand and glittering in the light that shone through from outside. Vulpes staggered over  beside it, and cautiously poked his head around to peer out.

"No deathclaws," he said, voice low. "There's a building." He jerked his head slightly in the building's direction, then squeezed his eyes shut and leaned back against the wall.

"Your leg-"

" _The building._ "

Boone frowned and moved to the other side of the window. The sun had finally come up over the clifftops, staining everything outside vividly, angrily bright but simultaneously rendered indistinct by the storm, like the sun shining through closed eyelids. He couldn't see the deathclaws. He hoped it was because they had given up, but he couldn't quite bring himself to believe it.

The building Vulpes had mentioned was only about thirty feet away. It looked like it used to be three stories, but the third floor was crumbling, collapsed down into the story below. The ground floor windows were boarded, but there was a door recessed slightly into the wall. There was no way to know if it would open.

"Looks clear," Boone breathed. "Can you-"

But Vulpes was already climbing through the window, sitting on the frame and rolling out. He landed in the dirt on the other side on his good leg. Boone scrambled after him, stepping up onto the sill and dropping out beside him.

"Not my nursemaid," he thought he heard Vulpes mutter, but before he could reply there was a thunderous growl, almost triumphant, and both men rushed the closed door as a set of scythelike claws swept down from the ruined second story of the building they had just left. The deathclaw was precariously perched above the window behind them, sprawled on all fours across the sloped debris, tail wrapped around a fallen I-beam for support.

"Shitshitshit _shitshit!_ " Boone slammed headlong into the door, fumbling at the knob, then bashing his shoulder against it when it still wouldn't open. Vulpes hovered at his side; he lifted his rifle to his shoulder, braced his back against the building wall, and opened fire as the deathclaw slipped down from the roof. It shrieked as steel burrowed into its thick hide, shaking its huge head in irritation. Its jowls rolled on its thick neck, sending a spray of hot, dark blood into the air. An answering bellow came from around the building.

Boone gave the door one more violent shove and toppled the stack of desks and chairs inside that had barred it shut. He didn't hesitate to vanish indoors, clambering as quickly as he could over the spilled furniture to relative safety. Vulpes backed unsteadily through the door, still firing, and then he turned and flung himself as far over the snarl of laminate and legs as he could. He landed with a sharp exhale halfway across the pile, and scrambled the rest of the way just as the deathclaw plunged into the doorway, knocking the door clear off its hinges and shifting the barricade and Vulpes both several feet inward. Vulpes rolled onto his back on the floor, braced the stock of his gun in his armpit, and fired a few more bursts into the deathclaw's face. It _screamed,_ but instead of retreating, it ducked its head and clawed deeper into the room, wedging its shoulders past the doorframe with some difficulty. Its back and horns grazed the ceiling, and its claws were tangled in the mess of chairs and debris.

Boone helped Vulpes up, staring horrified at the deathclaw the whole while. When it dragged itself several feet forward with the pull of one powerful arm, his senses returned even if his heart was still racing. He searched the room for an exit and ran for the first door he saw, opening on the side of the room. Vulpes limped along behind him, breathing labored. As they hurried through another dark room with boarded windows and down an unlit hallway cluttered with debris fallen from the ceiling and the crumbling bones of the long-dead, they could hear the deathclaw snarling and snorting its efforts as it tried to navigate the tight space, the sound echoing through the building.

They came upon another exterior door, and Boone didn't even ask Vulpes' opinion before pushing it open, spotting another ruin less than twenty feet away, and jogging towards it. It was only when his collar beeped that he paused to look back, still frantic. Vulpes was just pulling himself through the door, clearly struggling. He nearly fell again crossing the space to the next building to rejoin Boone. Together, they hurried as quickly as Vulpes could hobble to an open doorframe. A glance over his shoulder reassured Boone that the deathclaws hadn't caught up yet. He let Vulpes go inside first, and quickly followed. The eyebot, he realized in a moment of panic fueled clarity, had vanished.

"I can't-" Vulpes started and stopped after they had gotten a few rooms deep and found this building as empty as the others. Only now did that strike Boone as odd. If there were ghouls in the area, surely they would use the buildings as cover from the deathclaws. Unless, of course, this was the deathclaws' home turf and they avoided it completely. If that were the case, they might actually be safe to take a rest, as long as the deathclaws didn't find them again.

Boone pulled off his mask and goggles and mopped the dirt from his face with his sleeve, panting from exertion and the ride down from his adrenaline high. Vulpes just looked sick; he had sat down on one of the chairs left in the dim room, injured leg kept at a ginger right angle and face braced in his hands, elbows on knees. His mask dangled by its strap over his collar; his goggles were pushed up over his forehead.

Narrow blades of light cut between the boards that covered the room's two windows, providing enough to navigate by, but not much else. They seemed to be in what used to be some sort of office building; there were several desks shoved one against the other along the far wall, and a half dozen chairs scattered about like lost sheep. Boone dropped the duffel bag (how he had managed to hang onto it through all this, he didn't know) on the dusty floor and began hurriedly searching it for medical supplies. In his chair, Vulpes was carefully peeling back the armor and clothes on his bad leg with a very shaky hand. His skin was stained red when he pulled his pant leg up. The white bandages were soaked through completely on the side with the wound.

" _Faex_ ," Vulpes said faintly, drawing Boone's immediate attention.

"Shit," Boone echoed.

Blood seeped from the wound with every small movement; a long line of stitches had torn free and the skin flap pulled loosely away from his leg with gravity. The sight made him nauseous. Vulpes himself was looking very green around the gills.

"Shit, I- I don't know how to deal with this, I was never trained as a medic-"

Vulpes exhaled sharply as he shook his head with a jerk and extended a trembling hand.

"Medical supplies. Needle, thread, dressing."

Boone dug through the ammo, and growing anxious, upended the bag. He picked out the slim, rusting medical kit from the heap of supplies and opened it. At Vulpes' direction, he threaded the curved needle and handed it to him, then readied fresh bandages.

"I need," Vulpes said, but he paused to suck in a breath, slowly release it. Eyes darting to the boarded windows, to the doorway they had come through, as if expecting deathclaws. "I need you to- hold the flesh in place, and press down. Stop the bleeding."

"I..."

Vulpes grabbed Boone's hands and guided them to where they needed to be, with one braced against the undamaged side of his leg, and the other holding the sagging flap where it _should_ be. When he applied pressure at the spy's behest, though, Vulpes abruptly turned aside and dry heaved into the dust. Boone  was about to let up the pressure, when, still retching, Vulpes caught his wrist in a crushing grip and forced him to stay put.

Another few seconds of panting and spitting, and Vulpes leaned forward again, needle in hand. His hand shook almost violently as slowly, slowly, he reapplied sutures to the underlying tissue in his leg, and then closed up the skin above for the second time. His swollen flesh popped audibly every time the needle pressed through it.

Then, sticking the needle in his mouth for safe keeping, Vulpes fumbled at the cap to his canteen, wet a scrap of the old bandages, and wiped away the worst of the blood, leaving behind only dark smears over his pale skin. Then he pawed clumsily at his belt for the bag of healing powder, and applied it liberally to his wound.

"Bandages," he muttered past the needle. His hands pressed over his leg when Boone let go to grab the roll of gauze. "Start at the foot, brace the ankle. Make it tight."

It took nearly all the gauze, but after several minutes, Vulpes' leg was bound from knee to foot, the bandages wrapped tight over his wound, the only thing holding it all together. He still looked sweaty and gray, but he melted a little in his seat, slumping down and tilting his head against the back of the chair.

" _Glad to see you two playing nice,_ " the Courier's voice growled with dark delight, making both men jump.

"Fuck you," Boone spat at the eyebot hovering in the dark doorway. He pointedly turned his back on it, weaving his way through chunks of plaster and wood to the desks to rummage through the drawers while he waited for Vulpes to gather himself. No food, but he did turn up a few bobby pins and a pack of cigarettes. He'd be hungry, but at least he wouldn't be in withdrawal. Hooray.

There was a rustle, and when Boone glanced back, Vulpes was working the toe of his boot into the rubble, separating larger solids from the liquid sand and silently considering them, slumped in the daze of pain.

"You okay, fox?" Boone asked quietly, trying to shift a desk enough to get into the drawers behind it. The rustling stopped, and Vulpes didn't respond. It was only when the already dim room grew darker that Boone stilled and slowly looked over his shoulder again.

There, silhouetted in the gaps between the slats over the windows, stood a deathclaw. Vulpes was rigid in his chair, hands gripping the edge of the seat tight as he slowly, slowly pulled his foot back and eased himself forward, as if he was in the condition to bolt.

The shadow shifted very slightly, the deathclaw turning its head towards the window. A blob of shadow flicked at the crack between two boards, and the rangy shapes of its arms tensed, claws spreading.

There was a scraping sound- a horn dragging against wood as it lowered its head. Its slow inhale was audible in the hollow silence. Boone held his breath as he took a careful step toward Vulpes, then another, boots near silent in the thin sheet of sand that covered the floor. Vulpes reached slowly for the duffel bag of munitions when the deathclaw let out a snort, making him flinch inward and ball his outstretched hand into a clawed fist.

All at once, the monster roared, and the air was filled with splinters and dust as it rammed its head straight through the brittle boards. Its great horns and jaws were quickly followed by broad muscular shoulders and machete claws that cut viciously through the air as Boone closed the remaining few feet to help Vulpes up, bracing one arm around his waist and clutching the spy's wrist, his arm over Boone's shoulder, with the other. But Vulpes was struggling, and in his free right hand, Boone saw a glint of flame before Vulpes tossed his lighter into the duffel bag below the deathclaw, but then they were running (hobbling, stumbling) and the deathclaw was pulling a hind leg through the window-

There was the sudden thunder of several dozen bullets bursting from their cartridges in quick succession, and a deathclaw's pained screams. Vulpes was shaking in Boone's iron grip as he hauled him forward, their rifles bouncing painfully at their backs, and it took a moment to realize he was laughing, teeth bared. Boone's heart hammered against his ribs; he was half-carrying Vulpes through wrecked rooms until they very suddenly found themselves outside, having stumbled into a room that had most of two walls blown out.

The deathclaw was still screaming, and he thought he could hear its mate's anxious rumbling growl underneath that and the continuing burst of rounds.

He didn't slow down until the constant moan of the sandstorm began to drown out the mayhem they left behind.


	8. Chapter 8

"We have no ammo," Boone said as he half-dragged Vulpes up the incline of a fallen concrete barrier to the second floor of a wrecked building. They hadn't gotten far but they couldn't hear the screams of the deathclaws behind them anymore, and the cluster of buildings they had torn through in their attempt to escape them had long since faded into the orange haze. "What the fuck were you thinking?"

"We're alive," Vulpes shot back. "Better alive with no ammunition than dead with a bag full of it."

"We could have made it out of there."

Vulpes didn't need to voice the _maybe_ that already hung unacknowledged in the air.

"No ammo," Boone repeated, roughly adjusting Vulpes's arm over his shoulder, "no food, and no fucking idea where we're going." This aimed at the eyebot that still trailed after them. Once they were under the cover of a roof, however worn and weathered, he dropped Vulpes onto a desk and laid a few heavy kicks into a chunk of plaster. "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"

As the dust flew around him, he clenched his teeth, breathed, and willed his shoulders to unhunch. Vulpes watched wordlessly from where he sat. After a few seconds, Boone sank into a crouch, still measuring slow, shaking breaths in an attempt to calm down. He still had his rifle, that was good, and he had a handful of rounds on his belt. He also still had his pistol and a spare clip. Vulpes still had his machete and rifle, too, but how much ammo he had- Boone didn't know. Still, all was not lost. Shit was _bad_ , definitely, but there _was_ still the slightest chance they could make it through this.

"Leg?" He asked flatly.

"Bad." If he's admitting it, very bad. He bore the pain well; his face was still ashen and shone with sweat, but he was keeping it together.

"Healing powder?"

"I'm almost out."

"Can you keep going?"

A dry huff of near-laughter, bitter and humorless.

"We've come this far. There's nothing behind us but death. Nothing here for us but death. With the knife at our back, forward is the only option." There was a rumble as Vulpes pulled open the desk drawer and poked grimly through its contents. "Can't eat sand."

And that was the rub of it, really. How do you balance the reality of a grievous leg injury that could get them both killed with the certainty that staying put, trying to let it heal a little _would_ get them both killed?

Boone stood, and his riot duster unpooled and straightened around him.  As he moved, Vulpes slid off the desk, landing on his good leg and holding his injured one a few inches off the dusty floor. He slid his rifle off his shoulder and used it as an awkward crutch to hobble back to the gap in the wall they'd come through rather than asking the sniper's help.

Boone could just about hear him frowning, just by the way he held himself. When he lifted his gun to peer down the scope, he got concerned and joined him, staring out into the haze.

"Give me your rifle," Vulpes finally said as he lowered his own. Boone handed it to him without looking away from the blurred silhouettes of buildings.

"Don't waste bullets," he muttered, and the spy scoffed as he leaned against the wall and hoisted up the heavier rifle to look down its stronger scope. His frown intensified behind his mask, given away by the set of his jaw and the muscle that twitched at his temple.

"We have a problem." He handed the rifle back to Boone, and pointed out into the storm. Boone looked down the scope, trying to track where Vulpes was pointing. He groaned obscenities when he honed in on what the fox had glimpsed, moving among the jagged shadows.

"How the fuck did it follow us?"

As he watched, the deathclaw paused to drop on all fours, knuckles in the dirt and claws folded inward, so it could snuffle at the ground. At this distance, it was just a vague blotch of gray. Practically a miracle Vulpes had even seen it, but that _was_ his job, once. Seeing things. Knowing things.

"Scent," Vulpes suggested. With a leg like mincemeat... probably.

With that, Vulpes turned away from the opening in the wall and began limping the other way with the help of his rifle-crutch, towards the other end of the wrecked room and the abandoned fortress the ghouls here had turned it into at some point in the past, all barricades of ruined concrete and strategically placed chain link.

Time to move on. Nothing behind them but death, after all.

* * *

Vulpes didn't fight Boone when he stooped to pull Vulpes' arm back around his neck and supported him as they descended from the ruins back into broken, open road. No rubble to cling to out here, and he wasn't so proud that he was going to argue necessities.

Of course, he didn't _thank_ him, but that was a matter of principle. With their fates so intertwined, every act was selfish. They'd both be relieved to end this charade.

But there was the worrying matter of the deathclaw. It was still quite a ways off, lingering well behind them, but it was only a matter of time before it caught up, what with its long stride and their hampered mobility. With luck, it could only smell where they'd traveled, and the buildings would slow it down. If they were unfortunate, it would be able to track Vulpes' blood in the air like a lakelurk in chummed waters, cutting corners and avoiding obstacles, flanking them when they least expect it.

They hoped for the former, and they moved as fast as they could. No discussion necessary.

When Boone's stomach rumbled loudly, they didn't speak of that, either. And yet, the blasted remains of the town seemed to be stripped of all pre-war food, as though they were tracing the footsteps of equally desperate travelers.

And Boone supposed they were. Those ghouls... they lived here. And for as violent as they were, they didn't strike him as _feral_. Feral ghouls didn't use guns, for one, and their scattered gunfire echoed on and off through the destruction, distant but always too close.

"What do the ghouls here eat?" Boone asked the eyebot as he and Vulpes limped along, pressed side to side and looking very much like some two headed mutant wearing one huge coat.

The Courier didn't say anything, but Boone could hear his heavy breath over the mic, and the dark laughter concealed in it. Vulpes' grip tightened, his wiry bicep digging into Boone's neck.

Eventually, the sun began to set again, sinking back behind western cliffs and casting the sand swept wastes back into purplish gloom. As the light failed, campfires blossomed across the city, betraying the canyon's residents.

Exhausted, Boone called a halt atop the concrete burm they were traveling, and collapsed heavily against an old transport vehicle that sat on flat tires, drifts of sand building against its side. He sat in the lee, safe from the worst of the wind, and pulled down his mask to drink the last of his water as he looked down at the blinking flames that stained the landscape.

Vulpes hoisted himself up through the gap the missing driver's door left to perch on the worn bench seat, legs dangling wearily at Boone's shoulder.

"We have to go down there," Boone said after several minutes. He looked up at Vulpes, but the fox was staring sideways through the empty frame where the windshield used to be, back across ground they had already covered towards the distant cracks and pops of shots being fired. "Hey," he said, nudging Vulpes' leg and getting his attention, "We have to go down there. They'll have food, water, supplies." He paused, looking around. "I think the storm's getting lighter. If we go now we'll have more cover than if we wait."

All he got in reply was a strange glance, grim and resigned and somehow hollow, before Vulpes was turning back towards the sounds of the skirmish.

Well, Boone wasn't thrilled about their prospects either. He frowned down at the nearest campfire, squinting at the indistinct shapes that moved around it. They were only two men, heavily handicapped, with limited firepower. The only thing they had going for them was sheer desperation.

"Can't eat sand," he mumbled somewhat scathingly under his breath, but Vulpes ignored him. Boone just shook his head and pulled his mask back on before struggling to his feet. His muscles and joints all ached from the strain of half-carrying the spy. He couldn't imagine Vulpes felt any better; he certainly didn't deny the extended hand when it came time to slide down from the cab and get moving again.

"Corporal," Vulpes said as a fresh round of shots went off, barely audible over the staticy hiss of blowing sand. Boone started, a little shocked to actually be addressed. Vulpes' eyes flicked sidelong behind the reflective plastic of his goggles to the eyebot before settling on the sniper. "Do you remember what we discussed, that night in the bunker?"

"I- what?" Boone blinked, face knotted in confusion. The bunker... The abandoned bunker just off the river? It had only been days, but it felt like years- they had licked their wounds and talked about the Legion, the Legate, and the Courier's master plan. What Vulpes was driving at, he didn't know. "Yeah, I remember."

Vulpes must have seen the lingering bewilderment on his face, because he made a low noise of irritation before shaking his head with a frustrated jerk.

" _Keep_ remembering."

With that, he took up his rifle and began limping unaided down the path, looking for good cover.

* * *

There were at least five of them down there, indistinct figures loping along the outskirts of the fire's light. The smell of cooking meat filled the air, and Boone's mouth watered at the thought of a meal.

Boone and Vulpes were staked out above, sitting low along a barricade that looked down on the encampment. As far as higher ground went, it was about as good as it came, with no clear or direct path up the steep hill of shattered concrete to them. Boone had borrowed Vulpes' rifle for its weaker scope; in exchange, Vulpes had taken his sidearm, and was turned to watch their six as the sniper tried to tally their enemies and figure out a plan of attack. When he happened to look Vulpes' way, however, the fox had fingers and thumbs pressed against his downturned forehead, and he was ghostly pale in the strange evening light.

"Focus," he murmured. Vulpes shook his head slowly as if to clear it, let his hand drop, and resumed watch. Boone stared at him a few moments longer; he was looking... really bad. Sweaty, even though the temperature had dropped, and shaky- maybe from hunger, maybe from pain, maybe from infection. And he was clearly distracted, eyes a little bit glassy behind the goggles.

Bad.

He turned his attention back to the enemy camp. Two, maybe three figures were standing in the shadow of a multi-story building, collapsed at an angle so the bottom several floors were walled in with rubble and inaccessible. Another few roamed the campsite's outskirts, the dark shapes of guns in their hands. Even though the sand seemed to be growing thinner, the wind weaker, it was impossible to see clearly enough through the sandstorm to know what, exactly, they were packing, but with luck it wouldn't matter.

"I'm lining up a shot," he warned Vulpes, and taking up his own rifle, he spent a full minute setting his sights on the nearest ghoul he could make out. It was something like five or six in the afternoon, but with the sun behind the cliffs and the haze of sand covering the canyon, visibility was less than ideal. For the first time since they had set foot in the Divide, he felt an advantage. He already knew where his enemy was, and he had high ground and decent cover. In this indistinct orange glow, his muzzle flash would be hard to pick out. If he was quick and lucky, he could take out half of the spotted ghouls before they were found.

He liked his odds.

With a calm exhale, he squeezed the trigger, and his target collapsed instantly, bouncing grotesquely face-first off a concrete traffic barrier before hitting the dirt. The other ghouls immediately moved, not diving into cover but bursting forward, weapons raised. None of them yelled, though, or spoke at all;  the effect was eerie and Boone felt watched as he reloaded and aimed again. At his side, Vulpes just watched; from this distance, trying to join the fire fight would just waste ammo and give away their position.

Another shot fired, and a spray of blood flew from a ghoul's torso, visible even through the haze. The ghoul floundered and stumbled sideways before collapsing against the collapsed building's side. The ghouls he could still see had their faces turned outward, standing in a broad, loose semi-circle as they fruitlessly searched for their enemy. Still hidden, then. Finally, a turn of good luck. He slid a bit lower behind his cover when one ghoul turned his direction, but a moment later, he was firing another shot. The bullet hit on target, and the ghoul fell still clutching at the hole in his sternum.

A glance around, and he saw there were still two ghouls standing- the others were either dead or gone. The stragglers seemed to be wavering, as well. They were standing some fifteen feet apart from each other with knees slightly bent, backs slightly hunched, looking for all the world like a ragged pair of feral dogs. Then, even though they hadn't spoken a word to each other, they moved in tandem, slipping away from the fire into the dusk.

Boone watched for several minutes, still as a statue atop the barricaded burm. The fire light flickered as tongues of flame whipped and retreated under gusts of sandy wind. Nothing else moved.

Satisfied, Boone looked to Vulpes again. The fox was squinting uncertainly behind them, and it wasn't immediately clear if he was actually trying to make something out through the storm or if he'd spaced out. When Boone nudged him with one elbow, he blinked and looked at him, but kept glancing back out towards whatever had caught his eye.

"See something?"

"...I don't know." Vulpes let out a shaky exhale, then pawed at his forehead and scalp, wiping away caked sweat and sand in an unusually nervous action. Vulpes had been acting strangely, but Boone still found himself peering out into the wastes, suddenly feeling a prickle of anxiety along his spine at the thought of being watched. Vulpes, though, had abandoned whatever had held his focus before and was wearily assessing their situation. He looked briefly over his own shoulder at the camp Boone had cleared. "Let's get down there."

The way down wasn't easy, but that's what had made their position on the burm so defensible, so Boone tried not to get too annoyed when eventually, after some argument and bruising of Vulpes' ego, he had to hoist the man over his shoulder to get him down a particularly tricky stretch of craggy rubble. Once they reached level ground again, Vulpes all but tore his way free, standing stiffly on his own and refusing help as he limped to the campsite. The sniper trailed just behind, not quite ready to trust Vulpes was actually in good enough shape to make it on his own. He'd seen veteran soldiers tap out after much less grievous injuries than Vulpes had attained. It was some sort of miracle he had made it this far at all.

"We have to do something about the bodies," Boone said as they passed the first dead ghoul, lying face down in the dirt. "They'll attract wildlife."

Vulpes mumbled something that might have been " _I_ attract wildlife," but Boone wasn't sure. The spy certainly didn't slow down any as he approached the fire and the skewers of meat leaning against the pyramid of lumber at the center of the flames. At first, Boone thought he was just hungry- and he _had_ to be, they'd both been traveling how long now without eating, and how long before that on rations?- but when Vulpes arrived at the fire, he just stood and stared, and stared, and stared. And then, he turned, one hand raised to his mask as though he were instinctively stifling a cough the respirator would already cover. It wasn't until he'd pulled the mask down and was dry-heaving into the dirt again that Boone caught on.

"Are you okay?" he asked warily, not quite daring to put a hand on Vulpes' shoulder to steady him. Vulpes shook his head, but didn't say anything. Instead, he glowered at the eyebot.

" _When in Rome,_ " the Courier mocked with a hint of gleeful venom. Boone just gaped, confused, as he turned from one to the other.

"What the fuck's going on."

Vulpes shook his head again, and in a controlled collapse, he settled on the ground near the fire. Boone's stomach was growling in anticipation of food, however; he ignored the fox in favor of the meat spits. He didn't recognize any of the cuts, as rough and choppy as they were, but they looked good and smelled better. Unwilling to pass up fresh food after so long roughing it, he picked one skewer out of the fire; it was little more than repurposed scrap, just a three foot length of twisted, blackened wire with gobs of meat at random intervals along its length.

That was when he noticed a whole forearm skewered on a different piece of scrap amidst the flames.

Suddenly, Vulpes' behavior made sense.

"What the fuck," he breathed, dropping the kabob he was holding and slowly, slowly turning to look at the eyebot that hovered like a predatory thing on the very outer edge of the fire's light.

" _What did you think the Marked Men were eating, Craig? Vulpes figured it out some time ago. I'm a little disappointed that it took you this long_." A slight keening growl, as though he were actually disappointed, like he had somehow misjudged the sniper and had amended his opinion of him. Or, maybe he was just fucking with Boone. Hard to tell. _"There wasn't much living here before the missiles blew in their silos. Even less, after. Now there's just the Divide and the monsters that were born in it, and monsters gotta' eat."_ A harsh laugh. _“It’s a dog eat dog world.”_

There wasn't anything to say to that. He shouldn't have been surprised. Every horror is inevitable, when the Courier is involved.

And when only weeks before, Gannon had found him on top of the Lucky 38. Told him.

_There was blood all over his face._

_I think he was_ eating _him. Eating him alive._

_Monsters gotta' eat._

Boone barely had a chance to get the mask off before he was gagging, bent double. Vulpes watched with hollow, hollow eyes. And then, the fox shifted across the ground, reached into the flames, and grabbed a skewer of meat.

As Boone watched in horror, still fighting back the nausea that yawned in his throat, Vulpes took his hunting knife from his belt, stabbed it into the chunk of meat nearest the end of the spit, and slid it off. He stared at it for a moment, and then he lifted it to his mouth and bit in.

* * *

He only managed to eat one piece of meat, and ever since he had been staring at the hunting knife in his hands, turning it over and over. With each rotation, the light of the fire reflected from steel and illuminated his face in a narrow orange ribbon. There wasn't much there to see.

" _Survival justifies everything,_ " the Courier murmured. " _Let your instincts guide you._ "

"We're better than this. People shouldn't eat people," Boone responded flatly, knowing full well this wasn't an argument he could win, not in a situation like this.

The Courier knew it, too. A dark huff of laughter rolled through the speakers.

" _I learned this the hard way, and now I'm teaching you- you either surrender to your core instinct, to fuck and fight and feed like the beasts you are, or you accept the limitations of being human. You can't have it both ways. You can't have your humanity and eat it too. They've been trying it ever since the bombs fell- constant war and weariness wearing the mask of culture. Black ties and black flies and red carpets dyed with the blood of centuries. This half-life of theirs is nothing but a charade, but they insist on wearing those old shackles of society. How many are truly satisfied? How many are truly happy?_ "

"It's not about _happiness_."

" _No,_ " agreed the Courier. " _It's about not dying. And_ people _,_ " he growled, scornful and mocking, " _shouldn't eat people._ "

Boone held out for a while, but he knew the score. It was only a matter of time before he slipped a cold piece of meat off the spit he had dropped, brushed the sand off it, and hesitantly pulled a piece off with his fingers. When he did manage to put it in his mouth, it was the most delicious thing he had ever tasted, and that was almost enough to set him gagging again.

* * *

Around ten o'clock, the storm died away almost completely, leaving the camp eerily quiet.

" _Look up,_ " the Courier's voice commanded softly through the eyebot's speakers. Vulpes kept his gaze defiantly level, still twisting his unsheathed knife in his hands. Boone gave the eyebot a withering glare, as if the Courier could feel it from wherever he was perched in the ruins beyond their camp. " _Look at the sky. It's almost clear tonight; you can see Sirius even through the cloud... Do you know the constellations, Craig? Vulpes would, even if you don't. Their names and stories, they're part of the culture Edward Sallow dressed his sad empire with._ "

At this, Vulpes finally blinked, and looked up, his eyes focusing one distant pinprick of light hovering just above the cresting cliffs. Boone's gaze followed. It was one of the few stars readily visible through the scourging storm clouds that still hung menacingly over the Divide.

" _Sirius is the dog star,_ " the Courier continued, voice distant as he seemed to retreat into his thoughts. " _Orion's companion. I imagine Caesar liked to think of himself as Orion, when he wasn't too busy masquerading as Mars. A great hunter, a great warrior, handsome beyond compare- the man who courted the sunrise itself_." He laughed, a derisive huff of air. " _Did he say as much to you, Vulpes, or was it just implied?_ "

Vulpes twitched, but did not reply. The blade spun in his hands, faster than before.

" _And yet, Orion lies dead. He took his blade to the land, and the land bit back. His dog, though- his dog still lives. Can you still love your master, Vulpes, knowing that it was your gods who condemned him?_ "

"A scorpion," Vulpes said sharply, quietly. "It was a single scorpion. Jupiter takes no offense at the nature of Mars."

" _Caesar rots_ ," was the Courier's blunt reply, good humor quickly fading. What attention of his had been directed to the stars seemed to turn coldly back toward his hostages. " _Orion's corpse was placed in the stars. Maybe to honor him, maybe to shame him... maybe just to remind man that he is mortal. The scorpion is up there too, after all. Your Zeus, your Jupiter, he didn't see fit to bring Orion or Caesar back, or to save them in the first place. If they exist, your gods don't care about you or anything else in this wasteland. Caesar got cocky, and paid for it with his life. And you- you survived, because you know that in the end, you're just a dog, and dogs are so easy to kill. You've made a life out of survival. And so, Sirius shines bright when Orion is smothered._ "

There was a moment of almost contemplative silence, as Vulpes glared at the eyebot, and Craig watched Vulpes. The knife had stopped turning; its grip was now tightly clenched in the man's hand, his knuckles pressed white.

" _I haven't forgotten about you, Craig,_ " the Courier continued. "Your _star sits on the other end of the canyon. Look up above the bridge the Marked Men built between those two buildings in the northwest. Directly above- that first pinprick. Its name is Arcturus._ "

"Bear Guardian," Vulpes mumbled when Boone looked to him questioningly. The Courier hummed from wherever he was perched in the night, a sound of approval maybe, or simply accord. It came as a near-growl over the eyebot's speaker.

" _Yes. It sits watch over the Ursae- the Dippers, Craig, surely you know those, even if you can't see them right now._ " Boone didn't even try to find them, choosing instead to throw another scrap of lumber onto the small fire, stirring sparks and smoke into the air. " _Funny thing about the Ursae... Big ladles, they are, or wheelbarrows, or plows. Your star, Arcturus, is the left foot of the plowman. But at the same time, Ursa Major and Minor are bears, and Arcturus their driver. You tried to cut the Arcturus from your plowman's body, Craig, when you settled in Novac with Carla._ "

"Don't talk about her. Don't say her name."

" _Arcturus is just a part of you, after all, a dark and dangerous part you could never reconcile with, but the plows and the bears, they're one and the same. You were prepared to handle the bear when you embraced Arcturus. What happens when you reach for your plow and find tooth and claw instead? The bear is only as useful to you as you are to the bear, and you_ quit _them, Craig._ "

"That's bullshit and you know it."

" _Then why didn't you go to McCarran for help with your bomb collars? Worried they would think the loss of one bitter veteran was worth seeing Vulpes' head explode?_ " The words were biting, if only because they rang with truth. Boone gritted his teeth, and didn't respond.

" _It's just a thought, Craig. The stars are just stars, after all._ " The Courier's voice was faintly muffled, as if he had turned away from the microphone to look toward the heavens again. " _Men like to pick out their favorites and draw lines between them, but it's all just a willful trick of the mind. And at any rate, it's never the stars and constellations people need to worry about._ "

"What should they worry about, then?"

" _All that hungry, empty space between them. Insidious, unknown. By the time they give it notice, it has its fingers wrapped around their constellations' throats. But you already know this, don't you? You bore witness to it. You saw it_ happen _._ " There was a half second's silence, and he could _hear_ the Courier smiling, the wet pull of lips from sharp teeth. " _But you should rest. Good night, Craig, Vulpes. Eat well, sleep well, and heal. You'll need it. Your leg is beginning to smell a bit_ ripe _, Vulpes, and there's still quite a ways to go._ "

There was a click of the microphone being turned off, and the eyebot shuddered slightly in the air. Boone took in a shallow breath, eyes flicking to his companion in confused horror.

"Did he say... smell?"

* * *

The fire eventually died down, and creatures moved in the night. Vulpes never stirred, but Boone slept fitfully, waking at every sound, every distant gunshot.

In the surreal early hours of the morning, long before the sun rose, he sat frozen beside Vulpes' curled body with his pistol clutched in his hand as he listened to the sound of a body being dragged through the dirt. He could hear heavy breath forced past teeth and dead flesh, and feet sliding in the dirt as it shifted the corpse away one tug at a time. The creature (or creatures, it was so hard to know how many there were, especially since the wind rose again) never came close enough to the embers of the fire for him to get a look at it, though, never close enough to _him_ , and he thanked whatever cruel gods might be listening for the oversight.

The creatures were gone by sunrise.

So were the bodies.

 


	9. Chapter 9

Boone shook Vulpes awake when it was finally light enough to navigate by. The shifting sands looked purple in what little of dawn's light reflected down off the particle cloud above. The spy woke with a flinch, curling a little tighter in on himself, but then he was shifting away and sitting upright. He glanced blearily around their stolen campsite, gaze lingering where ghouls had fallen but only weapons now laid, and he stayed silent. If he looked sick the day before, it was nothing compared to this- drawn, gray, sweating, shaking.

There was still the issue of food. All there was was the meat from the night before.

In the light of the day, however, there was no escaping the reality of what they were eating. Neither managed to choke much down before giving up. Vulpes was the first to stop trying, letting the meat just fall from his slack hand into the dust.

"I thought cannibalism was something the Legion was okay with."

He didn't respond to Boone's half-hearted goading. He ignored him completely, absently running a hand lightly over his black leather shin-guard, as though it would soothe away the pain. He didn't react at all when Boone helped himself to Vulpes' canteen, taking a long swig from it before screwing the cap back on and setting it down between them.

The sniper wiped the water from his lips and stood. The bodies were gone, stolen in the night, but whatever creatures had dragged them away hadn't taken the supplies and weapons they had dropped when they fell. He spotted a rifle lying in the dirt where one ghoul had been; the ammunition could probably be scavenged for Vulpes' gun.

Perhaps he was growing too used to the bomb collars and their range, or maybe he was just getting too bold, but he spent the next few minutes straying outside the radius at a casual walk, collecting fallen weapons and supplies, and returning to dump it beside Vulpes. This set the collars beeping and falling silent in spurts; Boone ignored it and Vulpes didn't even seem to notice it. He was staring out into the shadowy landscape again, mind elsewhere. He made no move to help, or do anything else.

_Must be nice_ , Boone thought for one bitter second, but then he shook his head. No. Nothing about this was _nice_. If Vulpes was less than helpful, it was because of infection, or a mental breakdown, or any combination of very real, very overwhelming dangers to worry about, and pressing the matter wouldn't do any good.

The man _had_ just lost his entire world. The loss of Carla and their baby was still painful in Boone's mind, but it had been well over a year, and he could think about it without plummeting into a dark place. He knew how to circle that chasm, now. Vulpes, though, his loss was fresh and raw and _so_ absolute. In one fateful afternoon, he lost his god, his king, his nation, his family, his _place_. He didn't like sympathizing with the fox, knowing all the horrors he was responsible for, but in this, it was hard not to. Boone's mouth twitched in a reflexive grimace at the echo of the Courier's words so many weeks ago.

_He's going to lose his family soon. You could help him reinvent himself, when the time comes._

He'd called the Courier crazy, then. His opinion hadn't changed. But the man had been right in one thing- if they were going to get through this, they _had_ to do it together, even if Boone had to carry Vulpes the whole way.

He sighed heavily, and sat back down beside Vulpes to sort the scavenged ammunition. When he pushed a small pile of ammunition the right caliber for the rifle towards the fox, Vulpes blinked behind his goggles, looked down from the blurred line of the horizon, and began packing it away with shaking hands.

"You good to walk?"

Head still ducked, Vulpes twitched a shoulder in a shrug. They both found their answer a few minutes later, though, when Boone helped him up and he almost crumpled with his first step.

"Okay, then, well- okay," Boone said almost to himself, voice low and worried as he eased Vulpes down to the ground again. The Frumentarius sat there, awkwardly hunched over his injured leg, shaking and hissing through his teeth. "Okay," Boone said again, running a thumb anxiously under the strap of his rifle. He glanced around for anything that could be used as a cane or a crutch, and his eyes eventually settled on some exposed piping in a heap of rubble at the corner of the semi-collapsed building they had camped under.

"You're gonna have to work with me," he said, crouching to Vulpes' level to try and get him on his feet again. When he stretched an arm around him and tried to sling Vulpes' arm over his shoulder, the spy viciously battered his hands away with a snarl and curled more tightly in on himself, rocking slightly as he shifted his bad leg. His hands fluttered over his aching flesh, trapped between the instinctive urge to touch and the knowledge that it would only cause more pain.

Boone waited a full ten seconds, elbows propped on splayed knees and fingers steepled in front of tightly closed eyes and furrowed brow. With a slow, steady exhale, he lowered his hands and tried again, this time moving more slowly.

"We probably still have a deathclaw after us, and we need to get to the Courier before..." He trailed off. It didn't seem like a good time to be saying shit like _before you die_. "Come on. We just have to get to the building."

Slowly, Vulpes uncurled. He was consciously regulating his breathing; Boone could hear the slight shudder at the tail end of his unnaturally deep and even breaths as he allowed Boone to shrug under his arm. Together, they hobbled to the pile of rubble, Boone staggering under his shifting burden, and Vulpes half limping, half hopping. If this was going to be how they traveled from now on, it would probably save them no small amount of anguish just to put bullets in their own heads now.

No. Bad thoughts, bad thoughts. Boone shook his head to dismiss them as he deposited Vulpes along the sunken wall and began picking through the ruined plumbing.

The pipes he'd seen were narrow and dinged, copper long since turned dark brown with age and corrosion and broken apart through torque and time. What Boone was interested in was one length of pipe, some  four feet long, with about a foot of pipe sticking at a right angle off a joint on one end. As far as crutches went, it wasn't perfect, maybe a little short and definitely heavy and uncomfortable, but unless they happened upon the ruins of a clinic along the way... Well, there weren't many options open to them.

Boone brushed the worst of the plaster dust and sand off the pipe, then held it out to Vulpes. The fox slowly took it, arm buckling slightly at the weight as Boone let go. Ginger, he pushed himself up off the heap of concrete he had been half sitting, half leaning on and tried to figure out how to use the pipe. After several seconds of clumsy fumbling, he turned it so the short length pointed backwards under his arm, and his elbow slightly bent so he could grip the long section in his hand. He stooped slightly, but he managed to take a wobbly step forward, then two. He looked over at Boone, and without a word passed between them, Boone knew it was time to move on.

They left the camp behind, swallowed by the storm. Boone let Vulpes take the lead, moving surprisingly well on his makeshift crutch, and the sniper matched his pace some ten feet behind, eyes peeled and sidearm ready should they find trouble. There hadn't been any .308 ammo in his finds, but there was plenty for his pistol. Spare clips and loose rounds were shoved in his coat pockets. They rattled and jingled with each step, chiming through the hiss of sand against leather.  Slowly, his eyes drifted to the thin dusty blue between asphalt and air on the edge of his visibility. There were occasional gunshots, but it was easy to be lulled by the rhythm of his footsteps and the steady scrape and lurch of Vulpes ahead of him.

" _Are you paying attention?_ "

Boone about leapt from his skin, wheeling with gun drawn to stare wild-eyed at the eyebot that hovered behind. It was so easy to forget it there. Too easy, when the Courier was always listening. He glanced to Vulpes; he'd stopped, twisted to look behind him as he leaned on the pipe, his other hand clenched around the handle of the machete in his belt. His pulse ran wild behind the collar.

"What?" he exhaled with a small shake of his head, eyes squinted.

" _I asked if you were paying_ attention _._ " The consonants in "attention" were hard and sharp in the Courier's mouth, teeth on teeth. " _Have you forgotten why you're here?_ "

"To get these fucking collars off."

" _No,_ " growled the Courier, clearly disgruntled. " _Are you familiar with the Odyssey?_ "

"What the hell are you talking about." Boone was glaring levelly at the eyebot, but he twitched at the sound of Vulpes' voice, low and inflectionless.

"Ulysses," he said, and that was _all_ he said, but the Courier made some noise of acknowledgment.

" _The Odyssey is a story_ ," the Courier eventually continued. " _A very old story, about a warrior's journey. Thousands of years ago, it was recited in the streets, spoken person to person in a chain. Now it's just a book nobody remembers, except through vague namesakes."_ A pause, and Boone imagined the Courier's meaningful glance at the fox. " _I read that book here, you know. In the Divide, back when it was a town and not a tomb. There's a lot I don't remember, but I remember that. The books."_

"The Odyssey," Boone prompted, frowning uncertainly. He let his eyes drift across the landscape, very aware of how exposed they were.

" _A warrior_ ," repeated the Courier,  his voice shifting strangely to something gravely performative, " _after a great battle, tried to return home, but he offended the gods in war. What should have taken weeks took ten years; he was held captive, his crew transformed into animals or eaten by monsters. He sailed against rough seas and whirlpools and siren song. He sought council with the dead. And finally, he arrived home and slaughtered the hundred suitors there that hung over his wife and estate like vultures._ " He was quiet for a moment, pensive. " _If not for his journey, there would be no Odyssey. If not for his turmoil, there would be no story. What resolution- what catharsis is there, if the going is easy? What kind of life would Odysseus have had if he just stayed a passive prisoner on the first island he washed up on? What story would there be to tell if his journey home was uneventful? The only forward progress he made was when he was actively present in the moment. In those ten years, Odysseus adapted and grew into his new reality because he had to, to really live, and he earned the forgiveness and favor of the gods once more because of it. It's the_ journey _, Craig- do you understand?_ "

"What, and you think- you think you're the _god_ that's going to shower favor down on me or some shit?"

" _I'm the whirlpool that's going to drown you unless you start swimming,_ " the Courier snapped back with surprising force, and Boone actually flinched. " _No gods here, only monsters and mayhem._ _You don't survive this by keeping your head down and your eyes shut. You_ live _through it by experiencing the journey. If you don't understand by the time you reach me, you'll be a dead man walking. At my teeth,"_ he added in a growl, " _or something else's. You adapt or you die."_

He searched for words, anything that could throw the Courier off balance or at the very least mask his sudden confused dread, and he found nothing. Vulpes remained conspicuously quiet. The eyebot bobbed slightly in the air.

" _I didn't bring you here to_ scare _you,_ " the Courier said. Apparently the dread was obvious." _Understand that. Although_ ," he added, " _it's a good time to be scared. These are dangerous lands you're traveling, Craig. You'll find no friends here. Besides me._ "

"You're not my friend." He could be certain of that, if nothing else.

At the same time, Vulpes hissed something that had to be vicious in Latin, because there was a pregnant pause before the Courier spoke again.

" _Well, it'll make for a nice change from getting shot in the head._ " It was easy to hear the rot in his pleasant tone. All the nasty bits had been turned out to them, put on display. Sweet and deadly- drinking in his words was like drinking antifreeze. " _I read more than the Odyssey here. I devoured every book I could get my hands on, trying to find the right combination of words that could take the empty husk of who I was and make me whole. After I was shot, I realized- it wasn't the lack of something that was keeping me from living. It was the excess. Clinging pathetically to the pieces of who I used to be- what this_ world _used to be. My advice to you: if you can't use it to put yourself back together, you need to cast it away. What use has the scorpion for its old, too-small shell?  I cast it away. I cast it all away. And I am more alive than I have ever been."_

"Are you?" Boone asked on impulse, fixing the eyebot with a sudden piercing stare. "Because I _definitely_ got a clean shot on you at the Dam, and that couldn't have done much for your health."

When he heard the Courier's sharp inhale and low growl over the tinny speakers, he knew he'd landed a second shot. In his mind's eye, though, he remembered the sparks that flew with the blood when the Courier was hit, and he was filled with unease, like the lurching discomfort that comes with a misjudged step- foot falling on air instead of concrete, balance lost, mind and heart racing with shallow, aimless panic. There hadn't exactly been much opportunity to think about what had happened that day, but he had _missed_ something.

 " _...Keep walking, Craig. Keep walking and pay attention._ "

* * *

It was only because he was paying attention that he noticed the blot of shadow in the distance behind them as soon as he did.

He and Vulpes were already flagging at that point; the pain slowed Vulpes to a crawl and exhaustion had Boone in a position that wasn't much better. With the on and off crackle of the PipBoy's Geiger counter, Boone suspected they would both be affected by radiation sickness soon, too. Or perhaps they were already- he couldn't know if his headache was spawned from stress or radiation. Still... his eyesight was fine, and he wasn't imagining the beast that followed them.

All it took to stop Vulpes was a nudge to his shoulder. He lurched to a halt, arms trembling slightly as he swayed on his crutch.

"It caught up," Boone mumbled. Vulpes just ducked his head, and nodded shortly with face downturned. Of course, neither of them was surprised- the only real question was why it had taken the deathclaw so long.

A little less than a half mile stood between the men and monster, by Boone's best estimate. Its shadow was stooped, knuckles grazing the ground. It occurred to him that it must be as tired as they were, if it had been following them this whole time, and then he thought of the mysterious creatures that had stolen away the corpses of the ghouls. Maybe he wasn't the only one scared shitless of the danger he couldn't see lurking in the dark. Maybe the deathclaw had sensed them too, and avoided them.

It wasn't a reassuring thought. He gritted his teeth, staring back at the creature that loomed on the horizon. From the corner of his eye, he saw Vulpes shrug helplessly with his good shoulder, and shake his head. And they walked again, at the painfully slow pace Vulpes set. They couldn't move any faster; spotting the deathclaw just meant they would see the end coming. It wouldn't actually change anything.

How smart did an animal have to be, Boone found himself wondering again, to hold this kind of grudge?

Maybe it was the wrong question. It was a matter of grim determination more than intellect. After all, Boone wasn't any great thinker, and he'd managed to hold his grudges _very_ well.

For the briefest moment, he empathized with the great beast- it had lost its mate, and it was angry and alone and injured and it just wanted them to _bleed_. It was so easy to relate; if not for the Courier, if not for the collars, he would have put a bullet in Vulpes' head a long time ago. That kind of bone-deep ache doesn't just go away.

And then, the moment passed with the self-reminder that if he let it, the deathclaw would kill him. Even if he hadn't touched its mate, and even if Vulpes hadn't presumably killed it in a near-suicidal act of destruction, he would still be nothing more than the next meal to the creature. Killing deathclaws was just self defense, and he wouldn't begrudge himself his survival instinct. It's kill or be killed, eat or be eaten. No crime in that. No sin.

_Pay attention_.

All at once, his thoughts lurched with his stomach. Oh. _Oh_. A shudder ran down his spine, and he instinctively pulled his coat a little tighter around him. The memory of Fiends dodging his sniper fire outside the walls of New Vegas surfaced unbidden in his mind, and he flinched to recall how little he had felt when he'd extracted brain from skull with bullet, time and time again.

They had been people... but they didn't matter. He _still_ didn't care about them, and that somehow made it harder to manage- knowing that deep down, he felt justified in slaughtering them, because they were far from harmless, and because he disapproved of them, found their lifestyle disgusting. They had nothing to offer the Mojave, so he... _removed_ them from it. They would do the same to him, given the chance, but he never gave them the chance. Pot shots from the Lucky 38, raining death down on the unsuspecting, and it had been his _hobby_.

Not too different from how the Legion crucified "Profligates," when it came down to it.

Or how the Courier had sicced night stalkers on both armies.

" _You're understanding, now_ ," whispered the Courier just behind him, or maybe he imagined it.

No. No, no, no. Boone shook his head like a brahmin twitching away from flies, sharply tugged the collar of his coat to straighten it, and stalked on ahead of Vulpes, putting the fox between him and the eyebot.

The sun had come up, as much as the sun _can_ come up in a perpetual sandstorm below the cliffs, and once again their surroundings were a stain of angry oranges and browns. The winds had picked up, too, pelting a constant flow of sand at a right angle against his coat. His face stung, where the goggles and mask didn't cover. He could all but feel his skin being slowly peeled away.

Boone looked over his shoulder. The deathclaw was still there, a shadow behind them. But then, there were gunshots, surprisingly close, and he could see the deathclaw jerk sideways before lifting its head with a bellow of rage. Its voice carried like a ghost on the wind, somehow both distant and clear.

Boone found himself instinctively crouching slightly, making himself a smaller target. He looked to Vulpes and saw that he'd somehow gone paler. Both hands were wrapped tight around the pipe that supported him.

"You remember now?" he asked Boone hoarsely. "What we discussed?"

"Now is _not_ the time," he snapped in response, readying his rifle, but then Vulpes launched a hand at him, clawing his fingers into Boone's coat, dragging him close with a snarl as the gunshots continued. The sniper reflexively clamped a hand around Vulpes' wrist and tried to pry him off, but his grip was strong and he wouldn't be moved. Boone's eyes darted between the deathclaw (moving quickly now, but off to the side, horns lowered) and Vulpes, who was breathing heavily and _glowering_ , trapped somewhere between frustration and panic. For a moment he seemed to be struggling to speak, but after a long second he settled for an animal snarl and gave Boone a shove.

"We have to move quickly," Vulpes said, giving one last backwards glance (the deathclaw had vanished into the haze, but its roars and the shots of an automatic pistol were still audible) before pressing onward with renewed vigor.

"What the fuck is going on?" Boone asked, stumbling backwards after Vulpes, rifle in hand and attention torn between the deranged Frumentarius and the skirmish they were leaving behind. The spy was shaking badly, and panting.

"Now is not the time," came the response, spat bitterly as Vulpes struggled to limp faster.

That was it.

Unable to hold back any more, Boone turned on Vulpes, shifted his grip on the rifle, and swung it like a bat. The long barrel caught Vulpes along his upper arm and the back of his shoulder, and he was sent reeling. He yelped as he tried to catch himself on his injured leg, and then he was curled in the dirt, gingerly hugging his leg to his chest, trembling and gasping for breath.

Boone stood over him, shaking himself- adrenaline and anger, not pain. His rifle was half raised for another swing when Vulpes rolled onto his back, leg held aloft. His eyes, creased with agony, met Boone's.

"He's always listening," Vulpes choked out. "He's _always_ listening."                             

The raised rifle froze, then sank. Boone stared, jaw clenched, then swore and swung the rifle onto his back, hyper-aware of the eyebot hovering at his back.

"Fucking- _get up_." In a fluid motion, he drew from his military training, hooked an arm around one of Vulpes' legs and grabbed the fox's arm with his free hand, and hoisted him onto his shoulders in a carry. Still crouched, he transferred Vulpes' arm to the hand hooked around his knee and picked the pipe-crutch up off the ground. After a few adjustments, he rose and stalked down the road at a near-jog, seething but determined. Vulpes was still gasping through pain;  he struggled feebly to be let down but Boone was stronger. Vulpes' gun jabbed painfully at Boone's back with every step and it just made him grimace, tighten his grip, and move faster. Knowing that his own rifle had to be digging uncomfortably into Vulpes made it slightly easier.

" _Always_ listening," Vulpes coughed again from somewhere behind Boone's left ear. "And _he_ will never give up. I tried- I tried having him killed, but he _never_ gives up."

"Yeah, I was there at the dam, remember?" Boone grumbled, fighting the urge to dump Vulpes down the nearest ravine.

" _No_ ," Vulpes argued. "Not-..." But he didn't finish the thought. Instead, he let out a whine like a trapped animal and pressed his forehead into Boone's shoulder blade.

" _Craig-_ "

" _Not_ right _fucking_ now," he snarled between gritted teeth, leveling a glare at the eyebot as it soared into view, its grilled optics trained on him.

" _Consider this a favor- you may want-_ "

"Shut the fuck up!" Boone stopped without warning, eliciting another groan from Vulpes as he put pressure on his leg, and he drew his sidearm. He held it in his non-dominant left hand, but the eyebot was close enough that even the Courier had to know, with the gun pointing at the machine from only a yard away, he wouldn't miss.

" _...If that's what you want, Craig_ , _then by all means... carry on."_ the Courier said quietly, something shuttered and dangerous in his words.

Every step _hurt_. Even Vulpes stopped struggling, too busy breathing through his pain to put up a fight against the indignity of being carried, beyond digging clawlike fingers into Boone's shoulder. The path ahead of them was craggy and rough, and the better part of two hundred pounds on his back did nothing to ease the way. It was still faster than if Vulpes walked, though. After what felt like a small eternity, the daylight filtering down in everlasting noontime, he let his pace slow.

"Vulpes. Is it still following us?"

He felt Vulpes shift slightly, turning his head.

"...I don't see it. But we're still being followed."

"How do you know? Do you see-"

"I just know. The hunt isn't given up that easily." Vulpes sighed. "He's alw-"

"Always listening, yeah, you said." Any venom Boone might normally have applied was curbed, though, as the tall shapes of buildings emerged from the haze, fires dotted throughout, both on the ground and in the buildings. He couldn't see any ghouls, but they had to be here somewhere. They were walking into a hornet's nest. He looked to the eyebot.

"Is this the right path?"

No answer. The eyebot swiveled away from him and hung back as he slowly, cautiously entered the maze of wrecked buildings. They towered over him like slumbering giants, several stories tall with empty windows and crumbling walls. Makeshift catwalks and bridges had been build between them, joining buildings and nearby rock formations and cliff sides together. There seemed to be chairs and barrel fires scattered high above on those walkways, but he saw no signs of life.

That didn't mean there wasn't anything lurking, watching. In this labyrinth of ruins, the wind rose as it was channeled between buildings, whistling eerily on jagged debris like the ghost of the city reliving the explosions years earlier, or the war before that. With the wind went the sand, rising in great orange tentacles and whipping ruthlessly against concrete and leather and skin. Boone hissed as it rasped painfully against his jaw and temple, and Vulpes curled in a little on his shoulders, weakly trying to cover his exposed face and neck. The air was thick with dust and dirt, clouding the way and reducing anything more than a few feet away to an indistinct shadow or a flickering light. Spend long enough staring, and Boone could pick individual shapes out and identify them, but they were sitting ducks, and no amount of scrutiny would help them if the enemy spotted them first.

Better, perhaps, to make a run for it. If their chances of getting the jump on the enemy were slim, and the odds of them winning a skirmish with unseen enemies out of sight on higher ground were slimmer, then they could at least keep moving and make more difficult targets of themselves.

Boone was not used to this sort of combat. If he was uneasy before, he was quickly becoming fully anxious. And he was _tired_. Maybe carrying Vulpes had saved them precious time, but it had cost him equally precious energy. His empty stomach roiled, both hungry and nauseous.

The buildings loomed over him; the wind howled. There was no path to retreat down. There was only the dark path ahead.

He took the first tentative step forward. Then another. And another.

"Put me down," croaked Vulpes. At Boone's hesitation, he grew more insistent.  "Put me _down_."

"You can't keep up," Boone said quietly, even as he lowered Vulpes to the ground. When he handed the pipe to him, Vulpes was still unsteady on his feet. "Our only chance is to get through quicker than the ghouls can aim."

Vulpes shot him a dark glance that spoke his disdain for him.

"There are more ways than _yours_." He looked up through the dark streams of sand and dust to the paths above, then let his gaze fall to the street ahead. "We can stay low, against walls and in shadows. Slip through without notice." He exhaled, shook his head, turned his face downward. One trembling hand pressed against his forehead and temple before running back through close cropped hair, knocking loose the accumulated grit.

"At what cost?" asked Boone, as loudly as he dared. "We're being followed! If we go slow, the deathclaw will just catch up."

Vulpes looked down at his feet, either in thought or in pain. Hi eyes were squeezed shut behind the goggles.

"...That could play in our favor. What better distraction than a deathclaw?"

"I don't like this plan," Boone growled, jabbing an accusatory finger at Vulpes, but he let the fox take lead again, hobbling painfully slowly to the nearest wall and creeping along the heaps of debris at its foot, onward into the wind tunnel.

Vulpes set an agonizingly slow pace, and only partly because he was on the constant verge of collapse. His method seemed to consist largely of shrinking into whatever nooks and crannies he could find and resting until the wind picked up and the cloud of debris in the air thickened enough for him to be comfortable in slipping to the next hiding place. They covered ground in tiny increments, but cover ground they did- hiding from the light like radroaches. Not for the first time, Boone wondered if Vulpes' name didn't have more to do with his tendency to slink about unseen than it did his cruel cunning. Even as badly injured as he was, he still managed.

They had moved the length of one building and crossed the narrow gap to the next when Boone spotted movement above. He nudged Vulpes, and tipped his chin up to point out the ghoul stalking the length of a catwalk some two stories off the ground. He held a monster of a machine gun in his hands and his broad shoulders hunched brutishly, but his steps were light, his clouded eyes roving constantly. Vulpes leaned further back into the shadows of the building, his head tilted back against the rough concrete and a hand lifted to his collar, gripping its edge and blocking its blinking red light. Boone immediately did the same. The eyebot, he noticed, had the courtesy to make itself scarce.

The ghoul paused on the catwalk and adjusted his grip on his gun, face still downturned as he scoured the streets for intruders. For _quarry_. Then, after a long thirty seconds, he turned, and began walking back the way he'd come, gaze shifting back along ground they'd already covered.

The wind rose with a howl, and Vulpes staggered onward, all but dropping to the ground when he reached a sufficiently large chunk of concrete to hide behind. Boone was his shadow, moving just at his heels. When he lowered himself down next to the Frumentarius behind the rubble, he could hear him wheezing through his mask. The fox's face was chafed raw where it was exposed, and ghostly pale where it wasn't. He couldn't keep this up forever. Even Boone felt the strain- carrying Vulpes this far hadn't exactly been easy. Apart from feeling as though somebody had taken a belt sander to his face, his joints stuck and stuttered like they were full of ground glass. His muscles trembled with every movement. He wasn't liking their odds. He wasn't _trained_ for this shit, and his headache just kept building, his nausea growing. And the storm- the storm was only getting worse, now less a help than a hindrance. The choppy, powerful wind buffeted them left and right whenever they abandoned their cover, and the sand left them blinded and tired. The PipBoy provided constant crackling background noise, whispering the radiation.

They continued onward, and as the road continued to darken under the shadows of the buildings overhead and the thickening current of sand in the air, they spotted more and more ghouls around them. Some sat perched in windows with rifles; others patrolled catwalks or sat around barrel fires. None walked the ground. Boone wanted to belief this was because they were confident with their higher ground, but he kept thinking of the unseen creatures in the night. Maybe, he thought, they were simply aware that the ground wasn't _safe_. A chill ran down his spine.

Suddenly, there was a commotion. Echoes of gunfire rang down the street, but not even the muzzle flashes were visible through the storm. Above, ghouls spun on their heels, and bounded wordlessly towards the fighting in a steady stream.

The deathclaw?

Boone was still trying to parse the development when he noticed Vulpes was moving, and this time he seemed to be taking a page from Boone's book- he was practically vaulting himself along down the torn up street, taking one long stride with his good leg and a short hop with his crutch and bad leg to cover as much ground as he possible could without dropping from the pain and exertion. With a muttered curse, Boone took off after him. By Vulpes' new standards, he was making incredible time, but it only took a second or two for Boone to catch up, and the collars never beeped. The ghouls overhead didn't seem to notice them as they rushed the opposite direction, lifting guns to shoulders and taking up positions behind barriers and in empty window frames. All the while, the shooting continued, an unintelligible racket of blasts that carried and repeated strangely in the wind tunnel they traveled.

And then, the screaming began.

They hadn't heard the ghouls speak, and their behavior had been surreally _other_ , but the screams sounded all too human. There was a sickening thump as one ghoul inexplicably fell from three stories above into the street, landing head first on the edge of a pothole and filling it with spattered blood and gray matter. Another, just a dark shadow in the storm, retreated down the catwalk at a sprint only to trip heavily and land twitching and jerking on the twisted steel beam. Boone risked a horrified glance back, but he couldn't see _anything_ through the sand and dirt, just a relentless orange haze that looked much darker, much redder in these shadows. Vulpes, he realized, was panting heavily, almost hyperventilating. He grabbed the spy by the arm to steady him on impulse when he stumbled; Vulpes dug clawlike fingers into his sleeve, turned, tugged down his respirator, and vomited a thin stream of bile. He retched for a moment longer before forcing his feet forward, desperately shambling through heaps of shattered concrete and asphalt on shaky legs. Boone's hand was still clamped around his elbow, and whether he realized it or not he picked up the pace, beginning to drag Vulpes behind him. All the while, the screams in the air multiplied into a ghastly chorus. Still, they could not see the cause, and they hadn't heard the deathclaw's roars...

Vulpes tripped again, and Boone's hold on his arm wasn't enough to catch him, but the fox managed to break his own fall halfway down, one arm snagging the twisted remains of a fallen I-beam and the other (broken free from Boone's white knuckle grip) clenched around  the pipe, wedging it firmly in the rubble. Completely ashen and shaking violently, he lowered himself the rest of the way down, twisting to sit with his injured shin held carefully away from the rocks. He looked out into the storm, slightly wild-eyed and shoulders tensed.

"I can't," he choked between breaths, spitting sand and fitting the mask back to his face.

"I can't carry you," Boone replied, casting frantic glances back over his shoulder, then dropping into a crouch, speaking more quietly but just as urgently. His calves and hamstrings twitched violently and cramped, but he bore it with a wince. "Vulpes, you have to walk. You have to."

"I can't," Vulpes said again, and there was almost an apology in his tone. There was no real argument to make; if Vulpes could continue, he would. And if Boone could carry him, he would. As it was, though, Boone could barely carry _himself_. As resigned as he was terrified, he dropped down beside Vulpes, his rifle in his lap, all but sitting on his heels. At least they weren't entirely exposed; the storm bit painfully into their skin, but it also offered cover, and they were only feet away from the wall of the building they had been hugging. Jagged spikes and shelves of debris rose around them; two more dark shapes amidst the heaped concrete would draw little attention.

But they were on the ground, well into enemy territory, and something horrific was happening. The agonized screams had died down, but so had the gunfire; there were only sporadic bursts that rose over the whistling shriek of the wind.

Soon enough, there was only the wind, and it only got more ferocious. Boone found himself pressed hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder with the spy as the storm continued to grow, raging and spitting. Both men kept their chins tucked; Vulpes popped his collar and covered his exposed face and head with his arms. Boon pulled his entire duster up several inches, covering his head entirely before hiding his face in his knees. The only sounds were the hiss of sand and the howling wind and the muted crackle of the Geiger counter; the only smells were salt and sage and decay. There was only the pain of the abrasive breeze, and the almost reassuring pressure of the man beside him. A hot weight grew at their feet- sand, drifting and collecting against them, threatening to swallow them up.

"I wasn't supposed to die this way," Vulpes murmured from under the cover of his sleeves, sounding utterly lost. His words were almost inaudible in the wind. Boone let them go unacknowledged.

They sat for an eternity. It got dark. Boone could feel Vulpes shivering at his side, when the lingering heat still had the sniper sweating. He might have slept. He didn't know. The storm raged on.

He stirred at the sound of heavy feet stepping lightly, and unmistakable rattling breath. Boone lifted his head; sand cascaded off of him in a small avalanche. Vulpes remained motionless beside him.

About twenty feet away stood the deathclaw.

Its leathery sides glistened with blood beneath a thin crust of sand; puckered bullet wounds stood out black-red against the orange dusting. The creature's hind legs were needled and torn to halfway up its thighs; tags of skin dangled from fleshy strings here and there, and its hide was rough with lacerations.

It took another labored breath, mouth hanging slightly open, and swayed on its feet. The claws of one hand dipped to graze the ground for balance. And it watched him, with luminous eyes somewhat clouded and dazed, but it _saw_ him. It tasted the air with a flick of its tongue and rumbled with uncertainty. It didn't move.

Slowly, Boone found his grip on his rifle and pushed enough sand away that he could extend his legs and lift the butt of his rifle to his shoulder. He kept the muzzle pointed down, though, still staring fixedly at the beast.

The deathclaw leaned forward a few inches, lowering and extending its head in his direction and hesitantly lifting one foot, but then it lowed and took a half step back with a frustrated shake of its massive head. Its tongue flicked again. The deathclaw's eyes rolled, and nostrils flared as it snorted another breath.

Boone sucked in a breath of his own- he had been unconsciously holding it, frozen in place.

Abruptly, the deathclaw sighed a rattling hiss, and with a lash if its sharp scaled tail, it took several slow steps backward, turned, and limped away, head turned to watch Boone the entire time. Once or twice the creature paused, but with a flick of the tongue it was moving again.

"Vulpes," Boone finally breathed. He still stared out at the receding shadow of the deathclaw in the blowing sand, but he reached for the sand-covered shape at his side and shook the spy by one shoulder. He wasn't moving, but he couldn't be dead; after all, if Vulpes died, both collars would blow. He shook his shoulder again, and repeated his name.

At last Vulpes responded, if not vocally; he weakly pulled away from Boone's touch with a full body shudder, and curled in on himself more tightly. Sand still covered him. He didn't seem to care.

" _Vulpes_ ," Boone said one last time, more forcefully, and he dug an elbow into the man's side, perhaps a little harder than was strictly necessary.

"... not dead." It was hard to make out tone underneath the cover of his arms, but Boone thought he heard some measure of muted surprise.

"Not yet, anyway," the sniper said, struggling to unearth himself the rest of the way and find his feet. He stretched an arm out to the lump of spy still buried in the sand. "Come on. We have to get out of here. _Now_." The huddled spy unfolded slightly, his arms slipping down to his knees, his bloodshot eyes cast down toward his legs behind his goggles.

"I can't feel my foot," Vulpes remarked plainly, as if commenting on a strangely shaped cloud or a particularly interesting rock.

It wasn't _good_ news, by any means, but there wasn't anything that could be done.

"Come on," Boone repeated, tearing his eyes from Vulpes to peer into the gloom, watching for the deathclaw's shadow in the sands. He grabbed the fox's arm and pulled him upright, straightening the rifle on the other man's back and shoving the makeshift crutch under his arm. As the insulating sand fell away, Boone noticed a faint, unpleasant savory scent in the air, like street meat left too long in the sun. He was also uncomfortably aware that it seemed to be emanating from Vulpes. He didn't mention it.

In silence, they continued up the street. Vulpes was moving surprisingly well; the... _advancing_ condition of his injury was a real cause for concern, but numbness was easier to travel on than horrendous tearing pain. The squint of his eyes and the set of his jaw told the sniper that the pain was still there, a deep throbbing ache and sense of _wrongness_ , but all the sharp corners were rounded off, and his slowed pace had more to do with not quite knowing where his foot was or how much weight was on it than with it hurting.

The wind had not let up much in the time they spent hunkered down in the ruins; like an angry spirit, it blasted sheets of sand against the men, sending them stumbling into each other, clutching at sleeves and shoulders to keep their footing. There was no room for personal boundaries anymore.

After several long minutes and a mere city block, Boone glanced back and immediately clamped a hand on Vulpes' injured shoulder, squeezing too tightly and eliciting a hiss of pain. A huge shadow loomed behind them, far enough back that no surface detail could be discerned through the visual noise, but close enough that its jagged, hulking outline clearly identified it.

"The deathclaw is following us. Just... following," Boone breathed, loosing his grip when Vulpes wrapped his own fingers around his wrist. The fox laughed wryly. It sounded all wrong.

"More than the deathclaw," came the response, voice low, and then, "Can't you see them?"

The quivering hand released Boone's wrist, and motioned vaguely at the empty ground around them. Boone's eyes flicked instinctively around them. There was only sand and debris.

"There's nothing there," he said carefully, trying to urge Vulpes on faster with pressure behind his shoulder.

"They're invisible," Vulpes said, as if it should be obvious. He spoke in a hush, as if concerned about being overheard. His free floating hand gestured in the vicinity of his temple. "They've been following for a while. I can see them if..." He tilted his head queerly, then shook it, and let his eyes and his attention drop to the desert floor.

The deathclaw, Boone  noticed, was keeping pace with them, taking one step for every five of theirs, claws working anxiously through the air as if it were fidgeting, uncertain. Vulpes, meanwhile, staggered several feet at a rough diagonal before Boone caught hold of him again and steered him along a straight path. The frumentarius' head kept twitching minutely to the sides, yellowed eyes squinting at things that weren't there.

Very suddenly, tall buildings became small ones, some through design but most through decay, and the wind began to slightly ease up, no longer funneled into a jetstream by close walls. Instead, it hissed ominously across jagged peaks of concrete and brick that stood like sentinels over the road.

And then, they reached it- first just a darkness ahead, but then the ground before them opened, a dark and hungry maw in the upturned face of Death Valley.

A tunnel.

Its spine was hunched and jagged with the broken walls of the buildings that had toppled in to form it. The wind groaned hollowly as it reached the tunnel mouth and veered away, as though ferocity wasn't enough to fight the absolute blackness of its recesses.

" _Ulysses called this the Cave of the Abaddon_ ," the Courier's voice murmured. The eyebot emerged from the sands to hover at Boone's shoulder. " _The darkness of destruction, so close to the heart of what I am. What I was, what I became, what I am becoming."_

There was a low rumble of a growl from behind, making Boone start, and an answering snarl from the eyebot. The deathclaw had quietly drawn closer, but now it wanted their attention. When Boone turned to watch it, reaching for his gun, its foggy eyes were fixed resolutely on him. It took a few sudden, stumbling steps forward, shifting from foot to foot, always holding one well aloft. Its tail flicked irritably, and its foreclaws worked in a kaleidoscope of motion. Sk-sk-sk, as each claw brushed against its neighbor. For the briefest moment, its eyes flitted downward, but quickly back to Boone.

Vulpes had turned too. He seemed to be staring at a patch of dirt in the vicinity of the deathclaw's left flank.

" _You've almost reached me now_ ," the Courier continued, low and ominous, even as the deathclaw moved in a stuttering semicircle around them. " _You won't have to hear it much longer; my wyrd and my weird and my word, they all live here and die here in these passages with you, my only ties to mankind. Just make it through, and it will all be over._ "

The deathclaw growled again. Its thick skin twitched where dark flies gathered to the blood. There were maybe twenty feet dividing man and monster; the beast seemed to want to come closer, itching to rend flesh, but it was as though an invisible barrier stood in the way.

But then the deathclaw yelped and leapt back, and Boone stared in renewed horror at the empty space around it, because for a second he could have _sworn_ he'd seen something move, but-

-the deathclaw danced backward, towards the mouth of the Cave, and there were sudden paired lights from within, and rushing dark shapes-

A _shriek_ as clawed hands hooked into the deathclaw's flesh, dozens of them, pulling it deeper into the tunnel, where the only light was the glow from those _eyes_ , dozens and dozens of them. The deathclaw roared, and fought, stirring up a dust cloud-

Sudden and complete silence, as the deathclaw's voice abruptly cut out. Boone shuddered, taking several steps back, away from the Cave.

" _It's the only way_ ," the Courier crooned, like a devil on his shoulder.

And with that, something snapped, all the tension gone. Fuck it. _Fuck it_.

"You know what," Boone replied shortly, looking at Vulpes for a brief moment (still dazed, reacting slowly and numbly, visibly hunched and shaking) before fixing a dead glare on the eyebot. "No. We're done."

He could practically hear the Courier's eyes narrowing. He did hear the venomous, hissing inhale that meant he'd pissed the Courier off.

" _If you don't_ ," the Courier said tightly, " _you will die_."

"Vulpes is dying anyway," Boone finally admitted with a sharp laugh, swinging a hand to gesture violently at the flagging Frumentarius. "What's the fucking point? We're not going through your hell-tunnel, we're not dealing with those _whatever_ the fuck they are. We're done. _I'm_ done." And with luck, he would soon be with Carla and his baby in whatever afterlife there was. And if not, well- at least this hell would be over. A horrible, giddy energy came over him, and he suppressed a manic chuckle.

Vulpes muttered something in Latin that might have been agreement, but could just have easily been anything else. He was glancing restlessly around them, all but ignoring the eyebot.

" _If that's how you want to play, Craig,_ " said the Courier, voice soft and dangerous. There was a resounding crackle of speakers, sound echoing and fading in the wind, and then every surviving speaker in the canyon came to life with the haunting alarm call of a nuclear launch. The earth groaned and grumbled, vibrating under Boone's feet. The giddiness died instantly, leaving him in an unpleasant lurch, like the bottom of his stomach had fallen through.

"What are you-"

" _If your lives aren't enough to keep you interested in your journey,_ " the Courier cut him off, " _how about the lives of_ everyone _in the Mojave? The missiles only sleep, Craig, and they are... restless."_

Boone's head turned to Vulpes. Vulpes grew still, and returned his look, slightly dazed but seemingly lucid, just for the moment. And then, Vulpes took an unsteady step toward the tunnel. Bone heard the Courier's long exhale over the mic, as rage converted instantly to pleased anticipation.  Still, though, the ground continued to rumble. There were strange whooping calls as the creatures in the tunnel retreated and disappeared, alarmed by the falling debris. Vulpes stumbled on the uneven ground and fell, but still tried to find his feet and drag himself on. And the whole time, the sirens _screamed_.

Boone blinked, remembered himself, and burst into action.

He was on Vulpes in seconds, and pulling him along towards the tunnel as quick as he could drag him. Vulpes' breath was heavy and harsh in Boone's ear; he was only vaguely aware of how the spy kept losing his footing, jarring his feet on broken concrete and cracks in the earth.

They paused at the line the sun drew in the sand, dividing the baked orange hellscape of the Divide from the cold, dark shadow of the cave. There was no sign of the creatures within, but the stench of blood and entrails was strong in the air.

Vulpes, leaning heavily against Boone, was the first to step into the darkness. When he did, the sirens died away, their voices echoing ghostlike from one canyon wall to the other. A moment later, the earth went from shaking to humming, and then stilled entirely, leaving them with only the disorienting still silence of the unseen tunnel ahead.

They took another step forward.


	10. Chapter 10

" _My wyrd and my weird and my word..._ "

The Courier's voice echoed eerily down the dark tunnels. The lilting laughter that followed made Boone's hair stand on end.

The way was _dark_. Boone had seen moonless nights. He'd experienced the shut in darkness of windowless closets, pulled in by girls or shoved in by boys. But no black was so absolute as what he and Vulpes now navigated.

The cave seemed to go on forever. Even with his PipBoy light activated, very little was illuminated- the PipBoy was dim to start, and between the dust that hung pervasively in the air and the jagged shelves of concrete and steel that jutted from every angle, the light didn't travel far. It was enough for Vulpes and Boone to stagger along, clinging to each other just to stay standing, but it left everything outside their five foot bubble completely and terrifyingly dark.

They could hear things moving, in that darkness, all around them. Scrabbling in the stone.

" _Round the world and home again, that's the sailor's way,_ " the Courier's voice sang, high pitched and horrible and dissolving into another giggle that quickly collapsed into a low growl. Something large and unseen bounded from left to right across the tunnel, making gravel cascade in its wake. Boone tightened his grip on Vulpes' arm as the Courier's song gave way to spirited humming. The sound buzzed and carried in ways it shouldn't. It felt like there were five Couriers, standing behind them just outside of the light, hissing their poison.

" _See_ ," the Courier hissed suddenly, disturbing joviality abruptly traded for grim fascination. " _See them_."

He did. A pair of lights had appeared in the darkness, pale luminescent yellow. They shifted slightly in the distant shadows, narrowed, and then vanished as the creature turned away.

" _Children of the earth. Born from the bomb. I don_ _’t know where they came from, or what they were before. Only that they're here, now._ " Two more pairs of eyes appeared deeper in the cave, watching. " _They're_ hungry _, Craig. Everything in this damn Divide is so fucking_ hungry _._ "

As Vulpes pulled away to retch fruitlessly into the gravel and dust, Boone drew his sidearm, turning warily in the darkness as he tracked the many luminous eyes. Whatever they were, they had shredded the deathclaw like it was made of paper mache and he wasn't about to underestimate them.

Strange, he thought suddenly, jerking his gun level with a shadowy creature that took a few small hops closer. Strange that the deathclaw would follow them without attacking, and strange that it had recoiled without any explanation, almost like it had been forced into the tunnel as a... a demonstration. Or a warning.

He thought of the strange motion in the dust at the deathclaw's feet, and how its legs were nipped and torn. How it had kept one foot aloft as though wary of further injury.

He thought of all the bodies that had vanished in the night, and the inexplicable attack on the ghouls in the narrow streets of the bombed city. As his suspicions and realizations surfaced slowly from the fog of his growing headache, a new and profound horror blossomed. He found himself listening harder to every sound in the cave, every footstep and shift of gravel, every whisper of leathery skin or scales or claws against the concrete.

"Vulpes," he murmured, shuffling sideways until the spy, still gasping and gagging, was at his side again. "What's following us? You said there were things following us."

The fox didn't respond. He was standing, shaking, staring unresponsively into the nothing. One of the creatures, seeing Boone was distracted, took a few daring leaps forward, only for the sniper to squeeze off a few shots. The gunshots boomed and echoed painfully through the cave, stabbing into Boone's skull. In a rush, a half dozen of the creatures descended on them, darting fluidly in the darkness.

"Vulpes!" Boone yelled, and then the creatures were on them- slightly smaller than a human, but very strong, and built to navigate the dark. As he fired round after round into the dark, hoping to hit something, something heavy and clawed slammed into his back. They collapsed together into the gravel, a frantic tangle of gangly limbs, long scaly fingers, and assorted weaponry. The PipBoy's light strobed as it was covered and uncovered in the struggle; Boone managed to flip onto his back only for the gun to be knocked from his hands. Those glowing eyes were huge, only inches away, and he glimpsed dozens of sharp, triangular teeth before he swung his fist right into the monster's left eye. It shrieked in pain and scrambled away. Boone quickly rolled to his feet, but he couldn't find the gun in the rubble-

The collar began beeping.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, but where the _fuck_ is Vulpes? He heard a struggle further along the tunnel, but his ears were still ringing from the gunfire and the headache. He abandoned his search for the gun and launched himself blindly forward, moving quicker than the PipBoy's light could accommodate, and he only just saw the mass of pebbled greenish skin before he collided head-on with a knot of the creatures. Immediately, they turned on him, a dozen glowing eyes spinning to fix on their prey. He drew his own knife from his belt as they coalesced on him, and stabbed frantically at anything that felt scaly. Teeth sank into his left arm, just above the PipBoy. The whole while, his collar beeped, and his pained attempts to remove the creature from his arm became panicked, stabbing at its eyes and muzzle even as he elbowed and kicked others that crowded him, clawing ineffectively at his coat, unable to get enough purchase to cause damage.

There was the sick sound of a blade hacking into flesh; something hot and wet splashed over his face. The collar stopped beeping. One of the creatures trying to bore a hole between his ribs with its bare claws fell abruptly away into the dark, and then another. One more vicious stab at the monster latched onto his arm, and his knife pierced its brain case. Its muscles twitched but went lax, and he was able to shake it off. The knife was thoroughly embedded in its skull, though, and Bone found himself reaching for the machete Vulpes' spy had procured for them only days ago, though it felt like a lifetime had passed since then.

Wiping his hand clean of blood on his coat, he took the machete from its sheath and held it ready as he twisted his other arm, shining the PipBoy's light out away from him. Several feet away, Vulpes was sprawled across the uneven ground, chopping at one of the creatures with his machete as it tried to find an opening to snap at his throat. Its claws raked at his arms and chest. Boone didn't even think; he swept in, raised his machete, and brought it in a neat downward swing that cut halfway through the thing's corded, bony neck.

The few remaining creatures hissed their uncertain displeasure from several feet away, but then they slowly backed up, and eventually turned and bounded away into the deepest shadows, leaving the men alone with the dead. Boone gingerly pressed his fingers to his forehead and temple; the sudden silence rang deafeningly, and his head was positively _pounding_.

On the ground, Vulpes struggled to shove the creature's corpse off of him. Boone  stooped to help; he grabbed one of the thing's arms and yanked, rolling it off. Gingerly, Vulpes dragged himself up against a thicket of interwoven rebar, where he sat panting. He seemed to have lost his rifle and his crutch in the skirmish.

"Shit," Boone breathed, and he immediately doubled back to search for the pistol he'd dropped. It was dark, though, and the cavern was big. He shuffled blindly back in the way he thought he'd come, slightly stooped and heart still pounding painfully against his ribs. There was no sign of it. He couldn't even find the bodies of the creatures that had been killed.

"Fuck," he croaked, suppressing the desperate, broken sob that was trying to claw up out of his throat. He was just so _tired_.

There was a shift of debris, and Boone snapped to attention, but there was nothing there. It suddenly occurred to him that he’d left Vulpes alone in the dark. For a long moment, he stared into the darkness, holding his left arm behind him to block the PipBoy's glow. There- the blinking red light of Vulpes' bomb collar. Moving slowly over the unstable ground, he went back for the spy.

Vulpes hadn't moved, except for rocking slightly with forearms crossed over his stomach. Boone crouched down beside him, pressed the back of his hand to the man's forehead (burning and beaded with sweat) and then slipped two fingers under his jaw to feel that rapid, fluttering heartbeat. That Vulpes had even let him was a bad enough sign. Without a word, Boone unclipped his canteen from his belt, unscrewed the cap, and held it out to Vulpes. In response, Vulpes immediately leaned forward, gagging again. Boone risked awkwardly placing a hand on Vulpes' back, thought twice about patting or rubbing it, and withdrew just as quickly.

It took a minute for the gagging to subside, but Vulpes still looked... bad. Trembling and blinking and frighteningly pale under the Pipboy's light.

"Come on." The sniper held a hand out expectantly. Vulpes fumbled slightly in the dark, but they soon had solid holds on each other's wrists (though if Boone's hold was significantly more solid than Vulpes', well, neither brought it up) and Vulpes was pulled to his feet. Just as soon as he found his feet, though, Vulpes' hand clawed weakly at Boone's coat, and he was going down again, caught only at the last second. Boone grunted as he struggled to get a better hold on the Frumentarius. Eventually he managed to set him down somewhat gently, and raised the PipBoy to Vulpes' face. He seemed to have fainted- pain? Low blood pressure?

"Shit," Boone muttered again, and one more time, " _Shit._ "

And that was how he found himself once again with Vulpes on his shoulders, but this time, disconcertingly limp- a dead weight. Dying weight. Sore muscles and joints strained and groaned. Every step hurt more than the last. Sweat and tears mingled as they ran down his face and into his growing beard. Through it all, the nauseating savory sweet stench of infection grew stronger and stronger, with Vulpes' leg so near to his face.

And two by two, the glowing eyes reappeared in the dark, watching and waiting.

* * *

"S'fake," a voice slurred from his shoulder.

"Vulpes?" he gasped as he tried to climb up an incline of loose stone.

"All fake. Should be dead. Not real." A tired, bitter laugh. " _Divine intervention_."

"Vulpes. _Vulpes_."

But there was no response, and he didn't dare stop. The creatures had been slowly tightening the circle.

* * *

They were too close. Filmy eyes glowed from only yards away, shrinking away from his approach but inching nearer at his heels. Boone struggled to control his breathing, collaring his panic and exhaustion. He wouldn't be able to fight them again. They'd lost nearly all their weapons; they were down to Vulpes' knife, Boone's sniper rifle, and both their machetes. Vulpes was right- they _should_ be dead. He had to stay in control of himself. He needed a plan.

He needed _backup_.

"Courier?"

 _"You're almost there_ ," the Courier crooned, alarmingly close. Boone sucked in a sharp breath, catching the glint of metal out of the corner of his eye. How long had the eyebot been hovering there, looming just out of sight? His skin crawled.

"I need your help," Boone grated out as he struggled through a tangle of rebar. "I can't fight them alone."

" _A pity you are alone, then,_ " sang the Courier, slipping further away. " _And you_ are _alone. You have no friends here._ "

"You've been helping us the whole time," Boone guessed, emboldened by desperation. "The ghouls-"

" _Marked Men._ "

"- and the deathclaw. You've got your thumb on the scale."

" _Vulpes is a good influence on you._ " This time the voice came from his other side, and that was _wrong_ , he could still see the PipBoy's light reflecting from the eyebot, flickering as it weaved past support beams and miraculously intact walls. " _He makes you think._ "

"Please," Boone finally said. "Help me."

" _God helps those who help themselves. That's always been the way of things._ "

"We're so close..." he whispered to himself, the last of his hope draining away as a bulbous eyed creature crawled closer, breaking the bubble.

" _Yes_ ," the Courier agreed, nonchalant. " _You are very close. You just need to survive. That,_ " he said, as the first creature leapt on Boone's back, knocking Vulpes from his hold and bringing them both down into the dust, " _is the hard part_."

The creature's arm got caught in Boone's rifle strap. As it squealed and struggled, two more creatures descended. Boone wrenched the machete from his belt and twisted around, shrugging out of the strap. A swing of the machete and he drew first blood, but then there were six glowing eyes much too close, and claws tearing open his clothes, his skin. He screamed, and swung with the machete, but the creatures flinched back. He only grazed the arm of one of them, splitting scale but doing no real damage. The first creature, meanwhile, had untangled itself and was turning for easier prey- Vulpes, awkwardly dumped in the gravel and _so_ vulnerable.

"No!" Boone roared. He landed a vicious kick on one of the other two creatures, and rolled to the side, cleaving into the back of the thing's lower leg before hooklike claws sank into his legs, his back.

" _Audentes Fortuna iuvat_ ," the Courier's voice whispered from somewhere in the recesses of the cave, barely audible through Boone's screams. Something wrenched the creature away with a hideous squeal and a crunch of splintered bone, leaving his torn flesh open to the stinging air. He panted in the dust for only a second before dragging himself forward and half-covering Vulpes' motionless body with his own. The next creature that dove toward him got a face full of machete. The blade sunk obliquely through flesh and bone, and the creature spasmed violently before collapsing. He freed the machete with a jerk of his hand, ready for the next.

The next did not come. The remaining handful of the glowing eyed monsters banded together and scurried to a safe distance, hissing in his direction. In the PipBoy's faint light, he could see the tense arch of their backs, stiff and trembling. They were _scared_.

Not, he suspected dully, of him. It didn't escape him that there had been upwards of a dozen of the creatures before they'd attacked, and now only a handful survived. Boone had only killed _one_.

Divine intervention just seemed too benevolent a phrase. He could hear the Courier's eerie chuckle echoing distantly in the cave.

" _Nearly there, now,_ " he was saying. " _Nearly there._ "

Still watching the creatures, huddled fifteen yards away, he turned Vulpes onto his back and pressed fingers to the pulse at his throat, and slid his palm up to his clammy cheek. He gave him a couple sound slaps. Finally, Vulpes stirred, but only to groan hoarsely and attempt to curl in on himself.

"Not much further," Boone told him, mostly trying to reassure himself. He carefully pulled Vulpes  onto his shoulder again, ignoring the way his body protested, joints screaming in pain. "Not much further," he mouthed again once he'd managed to convince his shaking, stinging legs to straighten themselves under the weight.

* * *

There were gunshots, some distance behind them- the sound of a high caliber handgun. The cave's acoustics split the sounds, the crack reaching Boone's ears before the boom and spiking into his headache.

It briefly occurred to Boone to wonder who was shooting and how they had gotten this far, but everything hurt too much to dwell on it.

* * *

He didn't know how long he walked before he realized the darkness was breaking. It seemed like one second he was blindly following the indistinct murmur of the Courier's voice, and the next he could actually _see_ where he was going. Faint light outlined the jagged shapes of fallen walls and cracked foundations.

And then, piercing white light like knives in his eyes, bright enough to stop Boone in his tracks, squinting and turning his face. After a few second to let his eyes adjust, he slowly climbed towards the light, feet slipping on the smooth masonry he was trying to scale. The closer he got, the brighter the light, and he could hear the eerie moan of the wind.

Finally, squinting, he realized- it was a floodlight. Behind it, the dim yellowish rectangle of an open doorway into a lit room. With slightly renewed vigor, he climbed the gravely slope, passed the floodlight (he could feel its heat, scorching the air around it), and carefully maneuvered himself and Vulpes through the doorway and into what seemed to be a narrow stairwell. The wind howled, echoing hollowly down flight after flight.

Boone craned his neck, peering up the center of the turning stairs. Sucking in a shuddering breath, he mounted the first step, legs shaking, free arm clutching at the rusted handrail. Step after step, the pain spiking into his joints, muscles burning, and he repeated the mantra- almost there. Almost there.

He made it to the first small landing of many, turned the corner, and continued climbing. He could feel the wind vibrating in the rail, humming against numbed fingertips in time with its ghastly moaning.

At the third landing, Vulpes shifted suddenly, heaving. A thin rivulet of bile spattered the dusty stairs. Boone could feel Vulpes shaking again. It wasn't clear if he was really conscious. He kept climbing.

Four floors, and a noise echoed faintly through the stairwell, making Boone jerk to a halt. _Tink-tink-tink-tink_ , receding in a rhythmic scrabble, up and away.

It sounded like claws.

And yet, as he stared into the dim, flickering light above, and then glanced down over the railing to the stairs he'd already climbed, he saw nothing. Nothing at all. He clenched his jaw hard enough to make his teeth ache, and labored onward, hauling himself breathlessly upwards. Every stair took several seconds to pass; his knuckles were white as he pulled himself along the railing, feet falling like lead on the ancient aluminum-lipped stairs.

He and Carla had gotten married in New Vegas. When they got back to Vault 21, he had carried her across the threshold in his arms, grinning, and went on carrying her down the stairs and all the way back to their room. Now, as he struggled to carry a Legion spy up to unknown heights like some modern Sisyphus, he wanted nothing more than to plant a knife in Vulpes' throat and slip over the railing, to fall down flight after flight into the dark to be with Carla again.

Instead, he struggled up one more step to the next landing on violently shaking legs, fell to his knees, and awkwardly dumped Vulpes to the floor next to him. Just a breather, he told himself as he tugged at his collar, wheezing past it. Almost there, can't stop now. Courier would just bomb everything if he turned back now. If he even got out of the tunnel again.

He was beginning to see what he suspected Vulpes had understood the whole time. _Audentes Fortuna iuvat_ , the Courier had said, and even Boone's Latin was good enough to decipher that. Fortune favors the bold.

The facts were these: first and foremost, the Courier had _wanted_ them to reach him. Second, the Divide was a killing field, and the Courier knew this. Third, the Courier had helped them from the shadows until Boone had tried to derail the field trip.

As Vulpes would say, the Courier was... principled.  There were _rules_ to follow. As long as they kept trying, giving it their all, the Courier would see them through it. But if they slacked, he would cut them off. If they rebelled, he would turn. Reap what you sow.

As long as he kept putting one foot in front of the other, they might survive. He had to hope so.

There was a rustle as Vulpes shifted from the heap he'd landed in, rolling slowly and awkwardly onto his side and curling in on himself, his back turned to Boone. Boone didn't try to talk to him, instead propping his feet at eye level on the stair railings, willing them to stop throbbing and hoping that gravity would help with the swelling.

Distant echoes of automatic gunfire rang up the stairwell, and Boone stiffened, slowly and silently lowering his feet to the floor as he listened. Yes- there it was again.

Time to go. Except, Boone realized, his body wasn't cooperating. He barely managed to support his own weight on his shaking legs, and the most he could do with Vulpes was scrabble, weak and pathetic, against his wrist and thigh. His arms just... wouldn't lift.

"Fucking- _fuck!_ " He slammed a fist into the crumbling plaster wall. Without his full strength behind it, all it did was sting and skin his knuckles. He swore again, and sank back to the floor, cradling his bruised hand to his chest.

Below, the gunfire continued. Grew louder.

"Shit," Boone breathed, and silent, desperate laughter shook through him. For a moment, he buried his face in his hands, blocking out the dusty yellow light. Then, sucking in a breath, he opened his eyes.

Almost there.

He rolled gingerly onto his knees and slipped the rifle off his back. He fumbled with the strap, sliding the metal adjuster all the way to the clip, making it as large as possible. He shuffled over to Vulpes again, and rolled him onto his back. Vulpes made a pained noise, eyes squeezed shut, swallowing repeatedly. Without sparing much energy or consideration for his comfort, Boone lifted Vulpes' head and slipped the rifle strap under his shoulders. Then he laid the rifle lengthwise across his chest, and pulled his arms through the strap to lay awkwardly over the gun.

He grabbed the strap from under Vulpes and pulled it taut. Vulpes cringed and whined, trying to pull away without actually accomplishing anything. Boone pulled again, this time tugging him bodily across the floor several inches. He scooted a foot backwards towards the next stretch of stairs and gave the strap another yank.

As long as they were moving. They had to keep moving.

He reached the stairs. He sat on the first, pulled Vulpes, and moved up a step. Rinse. Repeat. When he pulled Vulpes up the bottom stair, the spy finally opened his eyes, glancing frantically around. Boone didn't try talking to him, instead dragging him up another step. Vulpes gave a wheeze of pain as his foot thudded against the wall.

Scrape. Scrape. Scrape. One stair at a time, Boone shifted them ever upward as Vulpes began to mumble unintelligibly.

Scrape, thump, and they made it to the next landing.

"He's coming," he realized Vulpes was saying. " _Memento. Audite, venit._ He's coming. _He's coming."_

No time to rest, because Vulpes was actively trying to shove himself onward with his one functioning foot, sliding across rough vinyl on his back, reaching for anything to drag himself along. One hand caught Boone's wrist in a surprisingly crushing grip.

" _Venit_ , _pr_ _āvī_!" His eyes were wild; his hand was burning hot against Boone's skin.

"I don't speak Latin," Boone hissed, tearing his arm free and continuing the slog. "You're delirious."

"He's _coming_." Vulpes seemed to find some strength in his panic, because they made significantly better time on the next flight of stairs, with Vulpes clawing his way backwards with Boone's help.

And after one more landing, and one more turn-

A door.

* * *

The light was blinding. It dug past eyes to stab right into brains, a vicious yellow laser that cut through dust and darkness like butter. It was only after Boone's eyes adjusted and he could see the land outside that he realized how quiet it was. The storm wasn't just in a lull, it was _dead_ , cleared up as if by magic. A stale breeze tumbled stray grains of sand and dirt across the rusty ground. Mirages made the air above the dirt shimmer. Nearby, he could hear the flow of sludgy, polluted water.

"Vulpes. I think this is it."

The spy was standing again, but barely. What weight wasn't supported by his uninjured leg was divided between Boone and the doorframe. His arm was heavy on Boone's shoulders. Boone’s knees creaked and trembled. His head _pounded_ , insistent and growing worse in the light.

The door opened over the Divide, into a largely destroyed building . All the walls were torn away; the floor remained, but at a strange angle. Boone helped Vulpes through the door. Ahead, fallen debris formed a sort of ramp down to ground level.

There, hovering five feet above scorched earth, the eyebot.

There beside it, sitting with back pressed against a crushed car, the Courier.

Both men tensed. Boone heard Vulpes' teeth grinding; the man's eyes were wide and focused, breath heavy, hand digging clawlike into his shoulder. Boone wasn't managing much better. His pulse raced, each beat of his heart making pain stab through his eyes, throb against his braincase. He wanted nothing more than to drop Vulpes, charge down there, and finally introduce the Courier to his fists.

Instead, he steadied his breathing, willed his heart to slow down, and began carefully guiding Vulpes down the treacherous slope of pulverized plaster and brick. His eyes never left the Courier.

He smelled it at the same time he noticed the black haze that hung around the Courier's shoulders. Disease. Shit. Death. And as they got closer, wading through the shimmering heat, the cloud resolved into a swarm of fat, red-eyed flies that hovered around the man like an aura. The Courier didn't twitch or swat as they landed on his face, crawled over mouth and nose, gathered around his eyes. He just watched Vulpes and Boone, and slowly, his face cracked in a beatific smile that let the flies buzz mindlessly against his lips and teeth.

"You're here," he croaked. "I wasn't sure you would make it." Now he did swat at the flies, lazily waving them far enough away to give him a moment's clear view of Boone and Vulpes, and giving them a view in return. Maggots roiled in the ugly, swollen gash on his scalp left by Boone's bullet. Dried blood, dark maroon and cracked by the sun, stained a large section of his face. His eyes were sunken, yellowed. And he noticed Boone's horror with dark glee.

"This body- " he coughed and gurgled brown foam through a hideous grin. "It's going the way of all flesh." His mouth wrapped around the word "flesh" as though it had mass, drawing it out and letting it drop, heavy and hissing, like a cockroach from his tongue.

"Take the collars off," Boone demanded quietly. The Courier's smile faded somewhat, became more plastic. A fly crawled into his open mouth, crawled back out again.

"I did promise you that, didn't I?"

"You keep your promises," Vulpes said desperately, as though it were scripture. Some focus had returned to his expression, his words. "You've always kept your promises."

"And I've always stacked the deck," the Courier added, with no small amount of pride. His hand twitched dismissively, and the eyebot floated toward them, extending a stinger-like arm. Boone froze, uncertain, as the arm approached his neck, but then there was a beeping noise and the collar fell away, a literal load off. As it fell into the dirt, the eyebot repeated the process on Vulpes, whose hand shot to his throat, rubbing, guarding.

"...That's it?" Boone asked. "You brought us here, through all of that, and now you're letting us go."

The Courier laughed. The sound seemed to echo in the small canyon.

"Nothing is ever that simple, Craig, you know that." He coughed again, and vomited a black sludge down his front. He wiped it from his chin with the heel of his hand. "If you want to leave, you have to go back the way you came. Do it all over again. And this time," he added, good humor gone, "without my guiding hand."

"Or?"

"Or," he echoed. "Or, you could stay here with me."

"You're dying." And he would sooner speed him along than join him.

"Small deaths," the Courier said enigmatically, with a loose shrug. "I've been dead and buried before. I will die again and again. I _am_ getting tired of being shot in the head, though, Craig." The jaundiced eyes narrowed poignantly as they fixed on Boone's face. "Think of it. If you stayed, you could become so much more. This place transformed me into something stronger than the pathetic human I was before. It can do the same for you, Craig. Vulpes. Make you into _more_. Take away the _worry_ and _fear_ and all those other soft human things, and replace them with the lust and power that every predator knows."

"You're insane," Vulpes breathed. Then, with a hint of the slyness Boone recognized from _before_ , when Caesar was alive and the Courier wasn't a _complete_ fucking lunatic, "You didn't walk here. You were shot in the head and you beat us here by days. There's another way in. There's another way out."

The Courier's lips peeled back in an instinctive snarl and his hand slid to his chest, clutching at the fabric of his vomit-stained shirt. He opened his mouth to reply, but then his eyes shifted quickly _up_ and _behind_ and there was an explosive gunshot-

-and blood splattered across rusted metal and dry earth. Spray made it past the flies to fleck Vulpes and Boone. The Courier's body spasmed and quickly stilled. All that was left of his head was gore and twisted metal, still sparking- circuitry where a brain should be. Vulpes stared, open mouthed, unbreathing, then sucked in a breath, snarled, and roared pure rage.

“ _No! He was mine!_ ”

 Horrified, Boone tore his eyes from the corpse to look behind. His blood ran cold.

Standing in the stairwell doorway and framed by shadow, a man. He stood unstooped, untired. In his hand, a .45 pistol, still raised.

Head to toe, he was wrapped in stark white bandages.

"The Burned Man," Vulpes hissed, shaking with fury. With more disdainful venom, " _Joshua Graham_."

"Vulpes Inculta," came the reply. The man descended the rubble slope with almost insulting ease, with only a slight drag in his step. The closer he came, the more Vulpes vibrated at Boone's side.

"He was mine. I was going to kill him," the spy said stiffly, as if making idle conversation. His gaze shifted ceaselessly, as if searching for a weapon. Boone could hear nervous laughter lurking in the back of Vulpes' throat. This was too much. Too much for both of them. The flies settled on the Courier's body again, exploring the newly exposed meat.

"He killed _my_ people," Graham replied. His voice was deep, even. Boone could imagine how he'd sounded in command. It was easy to envision commanding the slaughter of villages, or overseeing the decimation of his own men. Except… except he could hear the cracks in that voice, too, a quavering rage that sat underneath the placid surface. "He was mine to dispose of. Not _yours_. You have no claim here."

Boone glanced sidelong at Vulpes. The fox's grip on his shoulder had quickly passed from uncomfortable to painful.

"No claim- The Courier was not _yours_. The Courier was _done_ with you. He didn’t care about you or your ‘people.’ You were just a disappointing toy he discarded." A beat, as Vulpes cocked his head strangely, overridden with paranoia. “Did _you_ _…_ Did you kill Lucius? Did you turn him to your side? Are you behind this?”

Graham blinked in honest confusion, but Boone didn’t miss the steely flash of his eyes, the glint of sharp teeth behind his wrappings.

“I haven’t seen Lucius since he lit me on _fire_.”

The gun wasn't raised anymore, but neither was it holstered. The anger was beginning to bubble to the surface; Boone saw it in the Legate’s stillness. Vulpes seemed to be trying to covertly reach for his machete, his mistrust clear.

When Boone was young, he’d been to a history museum near the coast. It was filled with relics of the old world, including a very tatty taxidermy display of a large snake tangled with a black panther in combat. He remembered wondering, then, why two such different animals would ever fight, if they were both so dangerous. He wondered now if it wasn’t because they both had their eyes on the same tasty deer.

“I should kill you now- you _did_ try to have me killed. Those _were_ your Frumentarii that followed me to Zion, am I correct?”

“Frumentarii are spies, not assassins,” Vulpes said mechanically, letting his fingers graze the machete’s grip.

“So they were trying to murder me by mistake.”

"Maybe they were just trying to make your execution _stick_ ," the fox hissed. "I’m almost glad you survived long enough for the Courier to get to you and anyone foolish enough to follow you. They deserve whatever evil end they got."

"Watch your mouth; you speak ill of the innocent!”

"The innocent? _My_ tribe was innocent. My sister was innocent- do you remember what you did to her?" Vulpes asked, with a twitch of a joyless, manic smile. His voice dropped to a growl. "I should have lit the torch myself. He asked me if I did and I didn't but I should have. I _wanted_ to. The Courier was _mine_."

Vulpes' hand moved at the same moment Graham raised his gun, but both froze as Boone interjected,  forcing Vulpes behind him, confused and angry and all sorts of emotions he couldn't name-

"Both of you, _stop!_ This is fucking ridiculous!"

"The Courier met the Legate. He said he broke him, I told you this," Vulpes said hollowly, urgently, trying to get past Boone with his machete. "He took a twisted man and twisted him some more. I should have-"

"He came to me," the Burned Man cut in, imperious and scathing, gun pointed at Vulpes' center mass, ignoring the man the stood in the way. "He came to my home-"

" _'Home_!'" Vulpes spat back. "What home is there for creatures like us!"

"-and he corrupted the Dead Horses, brought war and death upon them. He cost so many people their lives, and their way of life. Their innocence is lost! And he made me- he _made me-_ "

"He didn't call you here," Boone ventured, speaking slowly. There was no collar at the man's bandaged neck. Graham shook his head.

"I had expected Ulysses to come to me in Zion. I got _him_ instead. Two faces of the same coin. I knew where to look."

"He was _mine to kill_ ," Vulpes insisted then, and he sounded _wrong_. His whole body shook with his rage, lips peeled back to bare teeth, machete drawn. "I should have had them string you up along the highway, I should have lit the torch myself, _he was mine to kill!_ "

" _Oh, Vulpes. There's enough of me to go around."_

Nobody so much as breathed. After a brief, ringing silence, there was a roll of laughter. Halfway through, it wavered oddly, like a radio on the fritz.

Boone frantically glanced back. There was no way the Courier was still alive, his head didn't _exist_ anymore, but that was the Courier's voice and-

"You're dead," Vulpes said, in shock, but-

" _I will die again, and again, and again._ " Another laugh. The air rippled around them and Boone's heart fell through his chest, because _of course_ , and _how could he be so stupid_.

The Legate was backing up, trying to get some solid cover behind him. Vulpes just seemed resigned, vibrating with adrenaline and unable to do anything with it, because it was over, but would never be over, and he was powerless.

" _Death_ ," the voice said, and this time it was pitched wrong, somehow both high and low, " _is a strange sensation. Allow me to demonstrate, Joshua."_

The air bulged, and suddenly the Burned Man was torn off his feet, dragged by one leg. Blood materialized from wounds opened by invisible teeth. Two concussive blasts, and then he wasn't being dragged anymore, and a dead night stalker materialized on the ground.

" _So much fight in you!_ " The Courier's voice said, with none of the constant cold friendliness afforded to Boone or Vulpes. " _But Vulpes is right. You're still so... uninteresting._ " More unseen jaws pulled the Burned Man back down, fangs piercing again and again. " _And I'm so_ tired _of being_ shot _in the fucking_ head _._ "

Vulpes let go of Boone. He collapsed after only one step. From there, though, he only had to scramble another couple yards to bury his machete into the Courier's body. The blade entered with a _thuck_ ; it squelched as he pulled it free and swung it again.

"He won't die," Vulpes wept. _Thuck_. "Why won't he die."

"What the fuck is going on," Boone mumbled to himself, staring in absolute horror at Vulpes mutilating a corpse to his right, the Burned Man unsuccessfully trying to fight off unknown numbers of night stalkers to his left. His hands pressed to the sides of his head, pushing up into his buzz-cut, pushing back against the blinding pain of his headache and the indecipherable chaos around him.

All at once, the camouflage fell away. Gone was the mirage that blanketed the ground, replaced by dozens and dozens of night stalkers, eerily silent. And stepping out from among them, the largest night stalker Boone had ever seen. Standing head and shoulder above the others, it could have wrestled a Brahmin and won. Like a cyberdog, its body had been mechanically augmented; steel armor covered its flanks, and what looked like a Mister Handy's robotic arms were folded neatly under its chest. More horrifying than that was the glass case affixed to its skull. Inside it floated a brain. It seemed small, removed from a human body and placed in a surrogate so large, but the scar that twisted across one side of the frontal lobe confirmed it for him. Boone shook his head, disgusted and horrified.

"You're fucking sick," he said, taking a step back. The night stalkers behind him silently made way, giving him a ten foot berth. His ears rang painfully through his high blood pressure; there was nothing he could do, no way he could kill the Courier's new body with a sniper rifle at this range, surrounded by enemies. He needed a proper gun and there _wasn't_ one, and he'd never felt so utterly impotent.

" _I'm a visionary, Craig,_ " the strange voice snapped, losing its patience. " _This is what I am. Can you say it's not true? Is it so wrong, that my body matches me?_ " The Courier-beast yawned to display double rows of venomous fangs framed by bulkier canine dentition. It took one long-legged step forward, smooth and slinking. Boone took two unsteady steps back to compensate, maintaining the space between them. He shook his head.

"No, this is _fucked up_."

" _Fucked!_ " The Courier-beast echoed, jaws moving slightly as the speakers rang out, as though on retained instinct. Somehow, the word felt empty. " _Fuck. Fu-u-u-u-u-_ " The audio feed stuttered; the night stalker tilted its head, lifted a hind leg, and gave its brain case and surrounding hardware a few sound kicks. " _Prototypes_ ," the thing offered, with a tone that implied a shrug. It took another step forward. " _Always interesting. Full of weird bugs. Words have flavors now. Didn't before."_ It paused, and regarded Boone coldly with its bulging mismatched eyes. _"'Fuck' tastes like Fiend-meat. Tangy, buzzy._ Fffuck _."_

 _THLACK_ , and the wet sound of flesh dividing and a blade sinking into bloodsoaked earth. Both Boone and the Courier-beast turned to the sound- Vulpes had managed to sever one arm from the the corpse, and was still chopping, choking on broken sobs and still repeating: "He won't die. He won't die. He won't die."

There was another gunshot, and Boone flinched and jerked his head towards the sound. Graham was crouched in the dirt over a dead night stalker, panting, gun pointed at the Courier beast. It shrieked with rage, fur on end, tail rattling. The entire horde followed suit, yipping and screaming and hissing, until the air shook with the sound.

" _Shoot_ you _in the_ fucking head," the Courier-beast hissed darkly as it abandoned Boone to scrabble back in the dirt and let its camouflage fold over it, " _Shoot you in the fucking head, see how_ that _tastes,_ shoot you in the fucking head-"

"- _he won't DIE-_ "

Graham fired two more rounds into the haze, and there was a brief spray of sparks as one bullet ricocheted off unseen metal, and a piercing yelp as the other struck flesh and a bleeding night stalker dropped its camouflage to bound away. The whole while, the Courier-beast kept hissing and gurgling its threats and its promises.

" _My word and my wyrd and my weird, are you worried, are you_ worried _? Beginnings and ends, mine and yours._ " A high giggling cackle, both human and coyote, overlapping. The manic peals echoed among the overturned vehicles and crumbling walls, and were repeated by countless more unseen night stalkers that chattered out their banding cry. Over it all, the Courier's growling, crooning voice stood dominant. " _Burrrned Maaan..."_

Boone glanced frantically back at Vulpes and was perturbed to see that he was still hacking at the Courier's human corpse, in complete ignorance of everything that was happening around him. Heavy arcs of blood flew off his machete with every swing. The Courier's other arm had come unattached, and the face and torso were quickly becoming unrecognizable. He swallowed back the bile and looked away again, turning so his back was partially towards Graham. He may be the boogie man of the Mojave and a complete wild card, but with a veritable monster to contend with, he wasn't a terrible ally to have, no matter how tenuous the alliance was. Graham seemed to be flagging, though; he was breathing heavily, swaying on his feet. And still he stood, gun held firm in his hands.

" _Fuck, fuck, fuck_ ," the Courier was muttering from somewhere in the clearing, but there was no thought or feeling there. Just the meaningless parroting of words for the sheer satisfaction of hearing them. " _Fuck and fight and feed and flay._ _But not today. Not today..._ " Its voice trailed off, but the thing's ominous presence was still heavy in the air. Boone was feeling faint; he stumbled feebly backwards and almost fell right into the pond of toxic sludge that burbled behind the final resting place of the Courier's old body. He took a few hurried sidesteps, and wound up standing at the nose of the car the corpse had been propped against, and where Vulpes was industriously reducing it to mincemeat. His eyes slid back to the red mess that was the corpse yet again, as though magnetically drawn in by the sheer gruesomeness of the scene, and he noticed something dark and metallic shining in the gory mass that used to be the Courier's torso. A gun, maybe? He wouldn't have come here unarmed...

"... _today we_ play _,_ " growled the Courier-beast suddenly, and it burst out of camouflage mid-leap, launching itself at Graham from only a couple yards away. His body crumpled noiselessly beneath the weight; he struggled briefly before one robotic arm unfolded from the creature's chest to snatch his gun away. Another jabbed him in the throat with a needle. His body went limp. At the same time, Boone lurched around the front headlight of the car to grab Vulpes by the machete arm, stilling his hand in the air, and seizing the dark thing from the rank coil of intestines it was nested in. A gun of some sort, glowing blue under the red! He raised it as the Courier-beast turned its great head to look at them, pulled the trigger, and-

-a beam of bright white light enveloped him. There was a nauseating pull under his sternum, and then he and Vulpes were dumped on the floor of a dark room. The lights rose slightly as Vulpes pulled away, giving Boone a startled, feral glare.

Before he could turn his machete on the sniper, a ball of light, static-y and oblong, filled the air, accompanied by the sizzling hiss of electricity. Boone grabbed Vulpes by the scruff of his coat and hauled him past the strange round computer that was the centerpiece of the room, through a doorway, under a table. Vulpes had the sense to stay quiet as the sound faded, and there were clawed footsteps on the metal floor.

" _Vulpes and Boone,_ " the Courier's warped voice murmured to itself from the room they had vacated. " _Boone, Boone, Boone, Boone... do you know where you are, Craig?_ " Boone pulled his legs up against his chest, shrinking into as small a space as he could. " _This is where I really found myself. I searched everywhere in the Mojave for some sense of identity, but it was here that I realized what I could be. What science could achieve. I don't need the transponder to travel, anymore. This body can do so_ much _."_ A few more steps, light and deliberate, and the snuff of a nose to the floor. " _Booooone... your name tastes like iron and dust, but I can smell the panic in your sweat, and your flesh will be so sweet-!_ "

The creature shoved its head through the door, followed by the spiderlike movement of the many-jointed mechanical arms that reached from its chest. The needle that had gotten Graham lunged at Boone like a cazador's sting, and then he was wrapping his hand around Vulpes' wrist and pulling the transponder's trigger again.

They spilled out of the blinding burst of light beside the splintered remains of a satellite, cracked like an egg where it had impacted with the dense, dry earth. Boone recognized this place- the drive-in, near Nipton. The men sat in tense silence under the dusky sky for several long minutes. Eventually, Vulpes collapsed onto his back. Maybe resting, maybe unconscious. Boone leaned back against the wreckage of the satellite and set the transponder in the dirt beside him.

Night fell over the next several minutes. The Courier never came.

He closed his eyes, let his hand trace over his bare throat, and he exhaled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stay tuned friends, there's still one more chapter to go!


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, and please remember to subscribe to the series!
> 
> More notes at the end!

It never really got dark in the open desert. Even far from the perpetual neon glow of New Vegas, the stars shone brightly over the cracked earth. The Milky Way cut a swath across the night sky and outlined everything in silver.

Boone was woken from feverish sleep by the scuff of boots in the dust. He cracked open his eyes to see several people, just silhouettes in the relative darkness, approaching. Still not quite awake, he tried to straighten himself some, but his joints were stiff and swollen, his muscles aching.

One of the strangers crouched down over Vulpes as a couple of the others stood watch with drawn rifles. Another approached Boone.

"He's alive," the man squatting over Vulpes said, waving a hand to clear the flies from the air. His voice was loud in the stillness. Boone was aware of a shadow over him, and then a hand taking him gently but firmly by the jaw and turning his face into the starlight. The man's cloud of hair glowed like a halo; his face was hidden in shadow.

"So's this one."

"What do we do with them?"

"Take 'em to Primm." It didn't sound like an order. More like a natural conclusion.

Boone struggled to remain focused; his thoughts moved sluggishly beneath the haze of his lingering headache. The hand vanished from his jaw, and then the man kneeled beside him, dropped a pack in the dirt between them, and began fishing things out. Primm. Why Primm?

The foreign hands tugged up the sleeve of his duster, wiped the worst of the grime from his inner arm, and then a needle jabbed uncomfortably in the crook of his elbow. Boone grimaced. The stranger gingerly hooked a drip bag on the satellite wreckage above Boone's head.

A few minutes passed. The needle was pulled from his arm, a rag pressed over the insertion point for a few seconds, and then a second needle stuck in. He hissed an inhale- StimPak. Its chemicals traced icy paths up his veins before they warmed to his body temperature. Immediately, his pain lessened, swelling reduced. His headache still twanged insistently, but it too was slowly fading, leaving him with his overwhelming exhaustion. He barely felt the faint sting of a third needle; the realization that he'd been injected with a chem of some sort only barely registered as his body seemed to float away from his mind, all sensation dulled. His eyelids felt leaden. He let them fall shut.

The next time he woke, he was being jostled, hoisted between two men. Their linked arms passed under his legs and behind his back, forming a human sling.

"One, two, three, _up_ ," one of them said, and together they lifted him upward and backward, setting him indelicately on a wooden surface. There seemed to be another body beside him. Heat radiated off it and got trapped in the space between them. Vulpes.

One of the men climbed up, just a shadow above Boone, and sat on what might have been a crate. There was a sound like a hand slapping hide, followed by a muffled "let's go." The world shifted with a jerk; the wood beneath Boone vibrated and he was present enough to piece together that he was in a cart of some sort. He couldn't bring himself to care, still numbly detached from his own flesh. He closed his eyes again and drifted off.

* * *

"Make some room," a voice said quietly. Boone stirred groggily as a foot jostled his shoulder, and two pairs of hands shifted him a few inches to the side. He cracked his eyes open. The sky was purplish, the stars fading in the growing light.

Two men were half-crouched beside Boone in the cart, precariously maintaining their balance as the cart rumbled along with fingers grazing the rough plank floor, the splintering side rails. Neither of the men was watching Boone.

"Hold him steady," the man near Boone's feet said, voice muffled. The other, about level with Boone's chest, swung a leg over Vulpes to straddle his torso, legs pinning his arms to his sides. He faced the other man, who was hunched over Vulpes' leg.

"Almost through... Ugh." The man leaned back distastefully, one  bloodstained hand rising briefly to the cloth wrapped over his nose and mouth. He grimaced and bent over the leg again. "It's not good. I can clean it, but-"

"Shit," the other man interjected as his colleague did _something_ and Vulpes jerked. "Shit, he's coming to." He turned his head up sharply, beckoning to somebody. There was a thud that vibrated through the whole cart as another man jumped on the back. He pulled himself up, clambered over Boone, and helped hold Vulpes down.

"Just- yeah, good. Hand me those clean bandages."

"What about those maggots? Aren't you going to...?"

"Better to leave them. Poor fuck. Where's that Med-X?"

A brief pause. The third man experimentally sat back, taking his weight off Vulpes. Then, without a word, he stepped over the rail of the cart and jumped off.

The men shifted their attention to Boone. The one in charge shuffled past his helper to squat  appraisingly beside the sniper. A thumb pulled at his eyelid.

"Any major injuries on this one?"

"No. Just radiation."

The thumb moved briefly to his other eye, then fingers passed lightly over his burnt and wind-chafed skin.

"That explains the peeling, then. He's not going to have a fun week. You gave them both RadAway?... Good." The man's full attention turned back to Boone, and this time he looked at him as though seeing him as a person for the first time. Hands fumbled at his sleeve and arm. "Nothing for you to worry about. Time to go back to sleep."

He felt the needle, but he couldn't pinpoint the moment when the world slipped away from him again.

* * *

Somebody was slapping his face. Hard. He groaned and rolled to the side. Hands grabbed his arms, his legs, and he was dragged from the cart blinking and weakly struggling.

"Take them inside," a gruff voice directed, and he was carried from blinding sunlight through a doorway into a blessedly dark but stale building. Through another door, and he was deposited on the floor beneath a boarded up window. His legs felt like rubber as he pulled them into a more comfortable position, still uncertain of what was happening. He felt stupid- not foolish, but _stupid_ , sluggish and dull.

There was a shuffle of activity and he looked to the door as a pair of men hauled Vulpes in, looking small and frail. When they dumped him across the room from Boone, he didn't move. A peculiar sickly-sweet smell came into the room with him, and he realized with muted disgust that it was the spy's leg, badly infected and now nearly bared to the world. His pants had been cut back to the knee, and only a thin layer of bandages stained with fresh blood and pus covered it.

Acting on impulse, Boone got onto his knees to shuffle over, but a hand immediately caught him by the back of the neck and forced him back down, to sit on his heels and do nothing. The pair who brought in Vulpes slipped into position along the walls, watching.

For a long time, they watched, and nothing happened. Boone sat frozen in place, his head slowly clearing as the chems wore off.

After a while, Vulpes gave a sort of wheezing groan into the floorboards. A minute later, he scrabbled weakly at them for a moment before shoving himself up into a sitting position, propped up by the wall at his back.

Boone caught his eye for a brief moment. Vulpes met his gaze, face just shy of blank, and then the fox looked away in apparent discomfort.

The room they were in was nearly empty of furniture. A single wooden chair sat unoccupied in one corner. A tiny end table with nothing on it stood next to the door. The only other decor was the thick layer of dust and dirt that time had left behind to accumulate in all the cracks.

The guards watched. Boone waited. And then, there was the sound of a door opening. The guards stood a little straighter; Boone and Vulpes both froze. Three men came in, their boots heavy and loud. The first and last looked like typical muscle. The man at the rear carried a small metal case, which he laid on the end table.

The man in between... He was as burly as the others, if a bit older; gray streaked his hair and beard. The guards looked to him with deference; the two who came with him worked around him, shifting out of the way as he moved the way a cazador will make way for its queen. More than that... _Vulpes_ had perked up, looking almost hopefully to the man.

"Lucius," Vulpes acknowledged hoarsely, as if he wasn't bleeding on the floor. "I've been looking for you."

"I've noticed." Lucius' eyes flickered up and behind, and then a guard’s boot slammed into Vulpes' ribs, and again, and again. He was knocked to his side, curled into a shuddering ball that shifted a couple inches with each blow. Boone flinched with each impact, but the weight of the hand wrapped firmly around the back of his neck kept him in place. Besides, he wasn't going to kill himself trying to help the damn dog head. Still. Still...

"Enough," Lucius finally said, hand raised, and the guard stepped back, but not before hocking a thick gob of spit onto the fox. Slowly, Vulpes uncurled, still shaking violently and unable to sit up. "You've been a thorn in my side, Vulpes." The fox wheezed in a breath, and coughed. Lucius just spoke over him.

"First you plotted with the Courier and his companions. Then you killed the Legate at the Dam. Yes," he said, apparently seeing some flicker of thought pass over Vulpes' face, "I know about that. My people saw you. And after the battle, you vanished entirely, only to turn up with the Courier's pet sniper in Nipton, where you killed _my_ people and burned _my_ camp."

Boone was very aware of Lucius' gaze turning on him and instinctively froze, breath catching in his throat. It had never really bothered him, being on Vulpes' radar. It was the man's job to pay attention to things like that, and he only ever watched. But the Praetorian? It made him uneasy, knowing that there were other spies, spies who weren't spies, spies more accustomed to beating answers out of someone than wheedling them out... And being held like this, weaponless in the custody of a man infamous for punching people to death- they didn't train you for this in basic.

"No," Vulpes managed at last, drawing the attention back to himself. "That's wrong. That's wrong."

"Wrong?" Lucius shook his head, incredulous, hands palm-up. "That's what you _did_. You knew Caesar was dying, you killed the Legate, and you were coming after me, and once I was out of the way, you'd be the rightful leader, wouldn't you. You always were power hungry. As bloodthirsty as Lanius, in your own way." He laughed in mocking disbelief. “You got your post through disobedience! You should have been crucified and instead you got promoted! You’ve always been untrustworthy. Caesar was a fool not to see it.”

" _No,_ " Vulpes repeated, and his dawning horror was audible. Boone glanced helplessly between the two, confused and growing more and more nervous. Lucius crouched down at Vulpes' head. He reached out  with his right hand, heavy with the steel of a ballistic fist, and grabbed a handful of Vulpes' coat to drag him upright. “The knife was at my back, so I stepped forward! You know we would have lost that battle if we followed the Centurion’s orders- I prevented needless death, _I didn_ _’t want to die_. I would never betray- it’s wrong, it’s all wrong-”

"Then _enlighten_ me."

"I killed-" he broke off to cough, arms pulled tight around his bruised ribs. Lucius turned his head lightly in mild disgust to avoid errant flecks of saliva and blood. "I killed the Legate. He was a threat. To the Legion. It would have fallen apart, it would have- I couldn't let that happen, not after everything. Not after. Not after I." He licked his lips, leaving them bloodier than they had been. "You were next in the line of succession. You were going to lead and I was trying to find you. So I could follow."

"The Legion's over," Lucius said quietly, stopping Vulpes in his tracks. Foggy, uncomprehending blue eyes met stony brown. "I'm ending it. Too many people have died."

The silence in the room was palpable; Vulpes' mouth hung open; his eyes darted across Lucius' face, as if trying to make sense of it all.

"I'm taking everybody who's still alive, everybody who's as sick of this as we are, Legion or not, and I'm taking them back east. We never should have come to the Mojave."

"...never should have..." Vulpes mouthed, expression still caught between confusion and bone-deep dismay.

Lucius let go of Vulpes and stood again.

"You can't do this." It was barely audible. Lucius huffed a laugh and raised his hands up again, this time in a mock show of power. Boone realized, with deep discomfort, that Vulpes was crying.

"Can't I? By all rights, I lead the Legion now. If anybody has the authority to disband it, it's me. There's no throne for you to sit on. It's over."

"I would have been loyal," murmured the fox. "I would have followed you to the ends of the earth. Died for you."

"The Legion is _over,_ and I don't want your _loyalty_. There's no place in the new order for you. For people _like_ you."

_Zealots_ , his tone said. _Cutthroats. Sneaks, spies, assassins._

He might as well have slapped Vulpes. The fox flinched at the words, blinking and lost.

"No place. For me."

"No."

"In your shiny new _order_." A sharp, caustic edge had leaked back into his voice. "How will you lead them? Pretty words? Pretty words don't stop hungry parents from eating their children."

This seemed to catch Lucius off guard. He leaned back on his heels, away from the fox.

"And what will you do with me? Put me on a post along the highway?" Arms peeled away from his chest, stretching out sideways as if inviting execution. "You _are_ right; I was promised the crucifix years ago. I don't mind baptizing your clean, friendly  _new order_ with my blood. Let them see the lies your rule is founded on. There will be others who resist you, who won't be swayed by _words_ -"

Lucius was the one to kick Vulpes this time, catching him in the small ribs and cutting him off with a pained airy groan. The man's fists were clenched, Boone noticed, and his hands were shaking. Vulpes had gotten to him.

"I'm not going to kill you," Lucius declared shakily. "We're better than that."

"Just going to torture me then," the fox replied in between gasps. Spit frothed pink at his lips; it looked like he'd bitten his tongue. "Magnanimous as you think you are now, that was always _your_ job, never mine. Do what you will. _True to Caesar_." He gave a sloppy salute, other arm wrapped tight around his gut.

"No," and this was even more uncertain, and enough to stir a manic giggle from Vulpes even as he spat blood on the floor. Too late for _that_. He looked up at Lucius again, eyes empty and flat.

"You can't let me live," he said. "Your new Legion and I can't coexist. I don't want to coexist with it."

Silence.

"I'm dying anyway." He said it quietly with half a shrug, gaze turning down to his leg, gathering flies even indoors. "Killing me would be... _mercy_." Distaste.

"I'm not going to kill you, Vulpes."

"Just put the knife in my hand," Vulpes wheezed, equal parts derisive and desperate, "Put the knife in my hand and I'll do it myself. My last act of _loyalty_."

"I'm not going to kill you," Lucius asserted a third and final time, more sure of himself now.

"Then I die a pointless death," said Vulpes, deflating. He leaned heavily back into the wall and squeezed his eyes shut. "Coward. Spent too long on the defensive, can't _act_." He opened his eyes again, staring pleadingly up at Lucius. "Give me a knife. Let me end this." A pause, and quietly but urgently, as if he couldn't hold it in, "If my death means nothing, don't make me die slowly."

Lucius had turned away, and beckoned the guard who had done the kicking. He leaned in to mutter orders into his ear, and the man turned to the case sitting conspicuously on the side table. Boone watched as he opened it, lifted a syringe from inside, and flicked its glass walls.

"Did you kill Caesar?" Vulpes asked, his voice still flat and dead, but his eyes fixed sharply on the approaching needle. At the silence, "I didn't think so. You put too much stock in honor for that. You didn't waste any time deserting, though." He shot a brief and pointed glare up at Lucius; the guard stretched out the fox's limp arm and jabbed the needle into flesh. "I led a charge across the dam while you were running with your tail between your legs. How about that for honor."

"I won't be baited, Vulpes." Lucius was focused on Boone; his steady stare was nowhere near as cold or calculating as Vulpes', but every bit as dangerous. He didn't strike Boone at a hateful man, or a cruel one, but... determined. Determination was more dangerous. He couldn't know what to expect from him, only that there was little chance of swaying him.

"You're Craig Boone," Lucius finally said.

"What are you going to do with Vulpes?"

The question was out before Boone could even consider it, and there was a flash of _something_ on Lucius' face. Maybe surprise, maybe disapproval.

"You fought for the Courier."

"Fought the Courier," Vulpes murmured from his place on the floor, staring down at the gathering cloud of flies that swarmed his leg with detached disgust.

"...He was the enemy of my enemy," Boone eventually said.

"The Courier is dead," the fox announced, and despite himself, Lucius twisted around to face him. Vulpes just swept some of the flies away, still staring downward. "The Burned Man killed him. But he's not dead. And he will die again."

"The Burned Man- _Joshua Graham_ is dead. You've said so yourself."

Vulpes shrugged. His head nodded forward, righted itself, and nodded again. Lucius' stare cut back to Boone.

"...Vulpes Inculta is none of your concern. As for you... I'll let you go free, but understand this- if you go to the NCR, or if you try to follow us east-"

"I just want to go home," Boone interrupted. He was watching Vulpes in his peripheral vision; the man toppled sideways onto the floor again, lying awkwardly across the splintered wood.

"Then off you go. Give him his weapons and see him out."

The heavy hand at Boone's neck pulled upward, guiding him back to his feet. He only managed one brief backwards glance to Vulpes' motionless body before he was pushed through the doorway, down the narrow hall, and back out into the blinding sunlight. The Praetorian guard finally let go. Boone rubbed at his neck, and turned to face the man on weak, rubbery legs that still hadn't recovered from the strain of the Divide.

"What _will_ happen to Vulpes?"

Unlike Lucius' right hand man, this Praetorian seemed more even tempered; his answer consisted of an upward twitch of his eyebrows, a pulled mouth, and a tilt of the head. Not even committal enough to be considered a shrug.

Boone was escorted down the main street to the viaduct that led out into what once was an NCR post and had apparently since been taken over by Lucius' budding faction. Boone led, herded by the Praetorian behind him and to the side.

The former Legionary gave a brief whistle when they reached one of the worn canvas tents left behind by the NCR. After a moment, a dark skinned man with a buoyant mane of hair stepped out. He had a small pack in hand. Apparently satisfied that the sniper had been passed into capable hands, the Praetorian nodded and turned back, leaving them alone.

"I remember you," Boone said slowly.

"I was with the scouting party that found you," he replied. He held out the pack. "You didn't have much with you. We didn't like the idea of sending you off into the desert without supplies so we put some stuff together."

Wary, Boone took the pack from the man. He opened it, and took a brief glance inside. There was some jerky, a canteen, a knife, some ammunition, and the transponder he had taken off the Courier's corpse, still bloody and flecked with dried gore.

"We've got a spare rifle for you too. Somebody said you were a sniper." The man reached back into the tent and pulled a hunting rifle from just within the entrance. "It's not loaded," he said, warning in his voice, before he held it out in Boone's reach.

"...Who's we?" Boone's doubt didn't stop him from taking the offered gun; the other man didn't release his grip for a long second, trying to convey something in his meaningful stare.

"We," the man said, gesturing vaguely at the camp. "Us. The ones who are going east."

"You don't even have a name for yourselves," Boone said numbly, somewhat astounded to realize he shared Vulpes' vague disgust and disapproval of the situation. A ragtag group of deserters, traitors, and lucky survivors, without any rules or even a name for themselves, banding together- he was just glad they were going east rather than west.

The man's grim half-smile of unspoken agreement did nothing to improve Boone's opinion. When even your own people see the cracks in the foundation...

"We'll be leaving in the next few days, and we'll be out of your hair. Lucius plans on taking the whole gaggle on to Flagstaff, but I know people will bail out before then, and others will just keep going. They say there's a decent settlement in Chicago that the Legion never reached, and even past that there's the coast." The man paused, looking intently at Boone. "I imagine Lucius said you couldn't come with, but that look in your eyes? Half the men here got that look. Nothing left for them here. A change of clothes, and Lucius and his guard wouldn't even know you were with us." He shrugged. "If you wanted to come."

"I just," Boone said again, "want to go home."

Never mind that he wasn't sure where home was.

At any rate, he thought as he loaded his rifle and walked out of Primm into the desert alone, Novac would be a good place to start looking.

* * *

The sun set over the desert pavement. The stars lit the way for a light cart that bounced and rumbled along behind a trotting brahmin, sending up a thin dust cloud. One shadowy man sat on the rails at the front of the cart, reins in hand, and now and then he would give them a sharp snap, spurring the brahmin onward. In the back of the cart, another man let one leg dangle over the packed earth. There was a rifle in his hands, but his attention was on the third and final man in their group, lying motionless beside him.

The cart rolled along toward a faint glow in the distance that, in time, resolved into the sleeping town of Goodsprings. A couple lanterns hung outside the bar; the cart passed it by. The man at the reins guided the brahmin toward a house perched atop a hill. Behind them, the settlement's Bighorners snorted and brayed uneasily; the restless stamp of their feet was audible even as the cart pulled up to the house.

The rifleman gave the area a quick once-over before slinging his weapon across his back and tipping himself off the rear of the cart before it had even stopped. As the man at the reins stilled the brahmin and tied it to the remains of a picket fence, he went to the door and knocked. He waited a few seconds, and knocked again, urgent.

"I'm coming, I'm coming!"

Fifteen seconds later, and the door opened on an older man, mostly bald but sporting a silvery mustache. The rifleman ignored the pistol in the hand  half-hidden behind the door, and instead jerked his head toward the cart. His companion was at the back of the cart, dragging the unconscious third man closer to the cart's edge.

"We have an injured man. You were the nearest doctor."

"Well, let me have a look at him."

The doctor opened the door wider and sidled past to the back of the cart. For a couple minutes, he examined the prone man, peeling back bandages and voicing his grim uncertainty with wordless grunts as the smell of infection and rot filled the air.

Finally: "You'd better bring him inside."

"Will he survive?" asked the rifleman, more curious than concerned.

"His chances aren't great," the doctor admitted as the other two men carefully hoisted the patient between them and began carrying him toward the door, "but still... There's a chance."

The doctor followed the men inside, pulling the door closed behind. Yards away, the brahmin's eyes rolled as the smell that had put the Bighorners in the town below on alert reached it. Not the injured human- the stench of festering wounds was nothing new. But this, this smell cut right through to the instinctive panic reserved for apex predators.

Fur, and scales, and metal, and blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And at long last, I tie up the loose ends, and "That We Become" is officially complete. I'd like to thank all the readers who left kudos, and extra thanks to those who commented- you keep me going! I really appreciate your enthusiasm, it's been so encouraging. This fic has been years in the making, and it's an incredible feeling, sitting here and looking back on my work and all the people who walked that lonesome road with me. :)
> 
> I'd also like to say... if you felt like I left a sequel hook at the end there, that's because there's another installment of this story on the way! Please subscribe to the series so you'll get email updates when I post it!


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